You get market making clients in Web3 by reaching projects in the narrow window between a listing being confirmed and the token going live. Before that window they have not budgeted for liquidity. After it, they have already signed with someone. The signal to watch is a new CEX listing announcement, a completed presale, or a token generation event within thirty days.
Why is market making a hard service to sell?
Market making is a hard sale for three reasons, and understanding all three changes how you prospect.
First, the buyer does not know they need it until they do. A pre-launch team is thinking about audits, exchange relationships and community. Liquidity provisioning sits below all of that until the day the token lists and the order book is empty.
Second, the decision window is short. Between a listing being confirmed and the token going live, a founder typically has two to six weeks. They will speak to three or four market makers in that time and sign with one. Reach them before the window and the conversation is theoretical. Reach them after and you are pitching a replacement, which is a much harder sale.
Third, the space is crowded with bad actors. Enough projects have been burned by market makers who dumped tokens or ran wash trading that founders arrive suspicious. Your first message is competing against that memory.
Where do market making leads actually come from?
The best source is a project that has just crossed a threshold. Not a project that exists, a project that has changed state.
- New CEX listing announcements. This is the highest-signal event there is. A project announcing a Gate, MEXC, LBank or Bitget listing needs liquidity on that pair within weeks. Exchange announcement channels publish these before most people notice.
- Completed presales and IDOs. A project that has just raised has budget and a token generation event ahead of it. Presale platforms publish completion dates.
- Low volume-to-market-cap ratio. An existing token with a $20M market cap and $80,000 of daily volume has a liquidity problem whether or not anyone has said so out loud. This is visible on CoinGecko and DexScreener.
- Thin order books on a live pair. If the spread is wide and the depth at two percent is negligible, the project either has no market maker or has a bad one.
- Recent funding rounds. A raise announced on CryptoRank or RootData means a treasury exists.
Notice what is not on that list. Market cap alone. Chain. Sector. Those describe a project. They do not describe a project with a problem.
How do you write a market making pitch that gets a reply?
The pitch that works names the number.
Generic outreach says: "We provide market making services for Web3 projects, helping improve liquidity and trading volume." That message has been sent to the same founder eleven times this month.
Specific outreach says: "Your MEXC pair is showing a 3.2% spread and around $6K depth at two percent. That is going to hurt you on the Gate listing next week."
The second message proves you looked. It also implicitly demonstrates the thing you are selling, which is that you understand order books. Anyone can claim market making expertise. Very few open with an observation that only someone who checked would make.
Three things belong in the first message and nothing else:
- One specific observation about their liquidity, drawn from public data.
- The consequence of that observation, stated plainly and without hype.
- A question, not a pitch. "Is liquidity something you are handling internally, or working with someone on?"
No deck. No fee schedule. No list of exchanges you support. Those belong in the second conversation, and you will only get one if the first message earns it.
Who is the right person to reach?
In most Web3 projects, the person who signs a market making agreement is the founder, the CFO, or a BD lead with treasury authority. Not the community manager, and not the moderator who answers in the Telegram group.
Telegram admin lists are the practical starting point, but they need filtering. A typical project group lists the announcements channel, two or three bots, a community moderator and, somewhere in there, one actual decision maker. Messaging the bot burns a send. Messaging the moderator gets you forwarded, at best.
Look for admins whose bio or custom title indicates seniority: founder, CEO, COO, BD, growth, partnerships. Skip anyone whose username ends in "bot", matches the project handle, or reads like a channel name.
How long is the market making sales cycle?
Shorter than most enterprise sales, longer than founders admit.
From first contact to signed agreement is typically two to eight weeks. The variance is almost entirely explained by where the project sits relative to its listing. A project two weeks from TGE moves fast because it has to. A project six months out will have a pleasant conversation and go quiet.
This is why timing beats volume in this vertical. Two hundred messages to projects at the wrong stage produce fewer deals than twenty messages to projects in the window.
What should you charge?
Market making pricing splits roughly three ways, and being clear about which model you run removes friction early.
- Monthly retainer. A fixed fee for maintaining spread and depth on agreed pairs. Common for smaller projects. Predictable for both sides.
- Loan and call option. The project lends you tokens, you provide liquidity, and you hold an option to buy at a strike. Common at larger scale. This is where the reputational damage in the industry originated, and founders will ask about it.
- Retainer plus performance. A base fee with upside tied to depth or uptime targets.
Whichever you run, publish it or explain it in the second conversation. Ambiguity about how a market maker gets paid is the single thing founders are most wary of, for good reason.
Frequently asked questions
How do you find crypto projects that need a market maker?
Watch for state changes rather than static attributes. New CEX listing announcements, completed presales, token generation events within thirty days, and existing tokens with a low volume-to-market-cap ratio. A project that has just confirmed a listing has a budgeted, urgent liquidity need.
What is a good volume-to-market-cap ratio?
Healthy tokens generally see daily volume between two and ten percent of market cap. Below roughly one percent suggests thin liquidity and a project that either has no market maker or an ineffective one. This is a signal, not a verdict, and it should open a question rather than a pitch.
Should you cold DM founders on Telegram about market making?
Yes, and it is the primary channel, because Web3 founders live on Telegram and rarely open cold email. Pace matters more than volume. Five direct messages per account per day is a safe default. What gets accounts banned is bursts of identical messages, not automation itself.
How long does it take to close a market making deal?
Typically two to eight weeks from first contact. The timing depends almost entirely on how close the project is to a listing or token generation event. A project two weeks from launch moves quickly. A project six months out will stall.
Who signs the market making agreement?
Usually the founder, CFO, or a BD lead with treasury authority. Community managers and moderators cannot authorise it. Filter Telegram admin lists for seniority signals in bios and custom titles.
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