Price discovery, day-zero depth, and clean price action from the moment trading opens. Listings are short events with long consequences — they should be treated accordingly.
The first hour of trading after a TGE is where price discovery happens under the most inhomogeneous conditions an asset will ever see. Inventory is imbalanced, information asymmetry is high, and the behavior of early liquidity sets the reference point for everything that follows.
TGE market-making is its own discipline. It requires quoting infrastructure tuned for the volatility of a fresh listing, venue agreements live from minute one, and close coordination with the issuer around communications and unlock schedules. Raven gives TGEs the care they deserve.
A TGE mandate is a sequence of different operational steps
Pre-TGE
Preparation phase
Venue agreements negotiated, API integrations live, inventory and risk engines calibrated for the expected volatility profile. Communication coordinated with the issuer's PR and unlock schedule so the market doesn't get caught off-guard.
Day zero
Launch & price discovery
Continuous two-sided quoting across primary venues from the moment trading opens. Inventory aggressively managed across books to prevent fragmentation. Tight response to early flow, with spreads and depth that signal real market quality to the community.
Stabilization
First weeks post-TGE
Spreads tighten as price discovery matures. Depth targets scale toward long-run mandate levels. Venue mix adjusts based on where flow is actually landing. The transition from launch mode to ongoing market making is deliberate, not automatic.
Things that determine whether day-zero goes cleanly — or haunts the chart for months.
01
We built Raven as an HFT firm first and a market maker second. That order matters. The result is tighter spreads, and quotes that stay live when slower shops widen or pull.
02
When volatility spikes, most market makers step back from the book entirely. We don't. Staying present when liquidity thins out is when counterparties feel the difference most.
03
We run a limited number of active engagements at any one time. It's a deliberate choice. Quality degrade quickly when overextending, and the counterparties we partner with feel the difference when we don't.
01
A market maker provides liquidity for a token by continuously placing buy and sell orders on exchanges. In practical terms, this means the market maker maintains resting orders on both sides of the order book at all times, so that when a trader wants to buy or sell the token, there is always a counterparty available at a competitive price. This activity narrows the bid-ask spread (the gap between the best buy and best sell price), which directly reduces the cost of trading for every participant. It also deepens the order book, meaning there is more capital available at each price level, which allows larger trades to execute without significant price impact (slippage). Market makers operate algorithmically, running systems that monitor prices across multiple exchanges 24/7 and adjust their quotes in real time as market conditions change. For token projects, the practical impact is that the token becomes tradeable at reasonable cost, the trading experience is smooth enough to attract and retain participants, and the order book metrics that exchanges use to evaluate listing health remain in good standing.
02
Projects should engage a market maker well before their token generation event (TGE), ideally a few months in advance. There are several reasons for this. First, most reputable centralized exchanges require or strongly prefer that the project has a designated market maker in place before they approve a listing. Without this commitment, the exchange risks launching a token into an empty order book, which produces a poor trading experience and reflects badly on the platform. Second, structuring a proper market-making agreement takes time. Negotiating KPIs, agreeing on the financial model, reviewing legal terms, and ensuring alignment between the market maker's approach and the project's tokenomics all require careful work that should not be rushed in the weeks before launch. Third, the market maker needs time to integrate with the exchanges where the token will be listed, set up API connections, test its systems against the specific token's trading characteristics, and coordinate with the project on launch-day logistics. Projects that approach this process early and methodically have significantly better outcomes than those that scramble to find a market maker in the final weeks before their TGE.
03
A token generation event is the point where a project's token first becomes tradable on secondary markets. At that moment, there are no existing order books, no reference price beyond the launch valuation, and often a concentrated pool of early holders who may want to sell into whatever liquidity exists. A market maker at TGE posts two-sided quotes from the first minute of trading, absorbs the initial buy and sell flow, and keeps spreads tight enough that the token trades in an orderly way rather than whipsawing on thin liquidity. The goal is a functioning market from day one, across the venues where the token is listed, so that early price discovery reflects real demand rather than the first few aggressive orders that happen to hit an empty book.
04
Launch-period trading sets the reference point for how a token is perceived in the market. Erratic price action, wide spreads, and shallow books in the first weeks create a market-data record that's hard to reverse: listings teams at other exchanges look at it, traders look at it, and a market's early character takes months to shift. The character of launch-period trading also shapes what's possible afterwards. Additional exchange listings, lending market integrations, derivatives venues, and index inclusions all look at liquidity quality and trading behavior on existing venues when making their own decisions. Markets that trade well early leave those doors open. Markets that trade poorly early close them.
05
With a direct conversation initiated via the contact form. We want to understand the project, the launch timeline, the venues in scope, and what the team is trying to achieve in the first weeks and months of trading. From there we work through commercial terms and the technical setup ahead of launch. We don't take every deal. When we do, it's because we've looked at the project, modeled the risk, and have conviction that the partnership works for both sides. Teams planning a TGE can reach out directly through the contact form.
Raven takes on a limited number of TGE engagements at any one time. If your launch needs execution that treats the first hour as the serious event it actually is, the conversation is the fastest way to find out whether there's a fit.
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