In the world of cryptocurrency, liquidity is everything. But who is providing this liquidity? How are they doing it? Is it really worth it for projects to pay high fees? In the past, the answers to these questions were often hidden behind layers of opaque structures—gray terms of market-making agreements, low disclosure standards of trading platforms, and the "default rules" of market manipulation. Until Coinwatch emerged, everything began to be exposed.

Coinwatch's mission is simple yet powerful: to allow all crypto projects to see what their market makers are actually doing on trading platforms. In the current regulatory vacuum and with a lack of industry self-regulation, it is becoming a brand new "decentralized regulatory tool," filling the trust deficit and pushing the crypto market into a more transparent and orderly era.

Why the Crypto Market Urgently Needs Market Maker Transparency

By the end of 2024, a scandal erupted in the crypto market: the token of Layer 2 project Movement Labs plummeted immediately upon launch, with nearly 66 million MOVE tokens being rapidly liquidated within 24 hours of listing, worth over $38 million. Even more disturbing is that this sell-off did not stem from retail panic but was secretly orchestrated by the market makers collaborating with the project. The project team later discovered that the tokens originally intended to "stabilize the market" had been transferred to a vaguely identified intermediary through a shadow agreement without the knowledge of senior management.

This is a warning signal and a reflection of the industry's norm. Although most Web3 projects hire market makers (MMs) to provide liquidity and stabilize prices before token launches, the real power often lies with the invisible side. Project teams typically cannot ascertain: Did the market makers fulfill the agreement? Did they place orders as required? Did they sell off privately? Where does the "liquidity" on the trading platform actually come from?

Currently, the market-making mechanism in the crypto market is caught in a dual dilemma of "structural imbalance and information distortion." On one hand, market makers should primarily focus on providing liquidity and reducing slippage, but due to poorly designed incentive structures, they are often induced to become price manipulators—acquiring large amounts of tokens through options agreements, inflating FDV, and then concentrating sell-offs once prices reach the exercise point, effectively evolving into arbitrage traders. On the other hand, the overall transparency of the industry is extremely low: key information such as market maker lists, token lending agreements, and order data is mostly not disclosed, making it difficult for project teams to coordinate supervision, and secondary market investors cannot clarify the true executing parties behind the trades. This asymmetric structure not only amplifies market volatility risks but also severely undermines market credibility and investor protection mechanisms.

The lack of transparency in a black-box mechanism will ultimately backfire on the trust foundation of the entire market. Coinwatch was born out of this trust crisis, attempting to bring a set of "visible" new rules to the industry.

Related Reading: "Revealing the Movement Market Maker Sell-off Scandal: Secret Contracts, Shadow Advisors, and Hidden Intermediaries"

What is Coinwatch: A Transparent Bridge Connecting Projects and Market Makers

Who Regulates Market Makers? They Decide to Step In

The founding team of Coinwatch consists of two seasoned primary market practitioners who are not "outsider observers" but have personally experienced how project teams are troubled by liquidity issues after launch.

Co-founder Matt Jobbe previously served as the head of financial products at Dapper Labs and CoinList, and also worked as a product manager at Coinbase, having led commodity derivatives trading at Barclays Bank in his early years. He understands the market challenges that crypto projects face after trading goes live—"If you can't see the liquidity, you can't see the real price."

The other co-founder, Brian Tubergen, is a co-founder of CoinList, former product director at AngelList, and a top graduate from Princeton's computer science department. He witnessed from the earliest token launch platforms that project teams often have no control over their market-making arrangements after launch, becoming victims of "paying for services with no return."

Based on these frontline experiences, they realized that a project's success relies not only on technology and community but also on the transparent management of market liquidity as the key to long-term stability. "We built Coinwatch to give project teams the ability to see the truth, rather than allowing the black box to consume trust," Brian describes their original intention.

One-Stop Access to Market Maker Truth: How Does Coinwatch Achieve This?

Coinwatch's core product is Coinwatch Track, which directly connects to market makers' API data, displaying real-time information such as order depth, buy and sell quotes, trading volume, and trading pair distribution. Unlike traditional methods that can only "estimate" market conditions, Coinwatch shows the actual operational behaviors, helping project teams assess: Am I really getting the services I paid for?

More importantly, it uses Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology to ensure that market makers' API keys are not disclosed to any third party, including Coinwatch itself. Sensitive data from market makers is processed internally within the TEE and uploaded as a verifiable summary, allowing project teams to see the results without accessing underlying permissions. This mechanism ensures both security and "non-adversarial transparency."

Additionally, Coinwatch is equipped with an Advisory service team to help project teams select suitable market makers, set reasonable liquidity targets, and participate in coordinating the CEX listing process, allowing projects to operate professionally in both "who to choose as market makers" and "how to manage market making."

From Black Box to Transparency: Coinwatch is Establishing a New Consensus in the Crypto Market

Since its launch in 2024, Coinwatch has quickly gained market recognition, with 12 mainstream market makers including Amber Group, Galaxy, and GCR already integrated into its system, becoming practitioners of "transparent market making."

Moreover, the adoption by project teams is accelerating, with dozens of leading ecosystems including Optimism, Aptos, Sui, and LayerZero incorporating Coinwatch into their daily market monitoring systems.

Coinwatch is not just a data dashboard tool; it is establishing a "market trust protocol": market makers are willing to be observed, project teams have the right to view data, and the platform is responsible for ensuring neutrality and security. When this protocol becomes the industry default standard, the black boxes in the market will gradually shrink, and the gray areas of speculative arbitrage will be replaced by transparent, symmetrical, and contract-driven cooperative mechanisms.

Coinwatch is not a regulatory body; it does not force anyone to disclose information, but it uses technology and trust design to make "transparency" a voluntary choice, gradually evolving into a "market entry ticket." In a crypto world where regulation has not yet fully arrived, it is reconstructing market order in a more efficient way.

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