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Open original source ↗One area of crypto mkt structure that seems very opaque and weird to me still is market maker <> token issuer / foundation relationships. I would guess this is responsible for a lot more issues than it gets credit for.
Feels like in the last year there have been several "our market maker fucked us" stories that just disappear and nobody ever knows what actually happened.
About a month ago, some token crashed like 90% and then the founder wrote some long thread saying "wintermute did it to us" and then nothing happened.
Am surprised there is no solution for this yet: maybe founders should have to publish/disclose the terms of their MM deals, CEXs can formalise some standards which bar listings, or maybe there is some other solution that ppl smarter than me can invent.
I guess you want (1) token buyers have info symmetry on the incentive structure of the MM deal and (2) founders dont keep getting scammed by dodgy MMs or nonstandard agreements.
Pic related.
Obviously there is incentive amongst the shadier / dumpier teams to engage the MMs that offer the dumpier services, and it is not likely that these folks will draw attention to themselves with any form of transparency
(eg. if you signed up with the MM who provides "exit services" and then they dump your token, blaming the MM seems convenient even if it was your plan the whole time).
But it also seems like, for the projects without these short-term goals, there could be a large benefit to establishing a standard of transparency around these things.
Today, you probably wouldn't buy a token if it didn't disclose (a) how many tokens existed, or (b) what the vesting schedule was for founders. But maybe in the future you would be similarly dissuaded if you do not know what the MM agreement looks like, or even which MM agreements exist.
If a founder has so little visibility into something that they have to accuse their MM in public, using assumptions, then how is it even possible for an outsider to understand the situation at all? How can a token buyer assess a token, etc.
There even seems like incentives for market makers to increase transparency too, since good-acting MMs likely also get annoyed for getting blamed for things that other ppl did, or grouped in with less-good-MMs, etc.
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