In the world of cryptocurrency, liquidity is everything. But who provides this liquidity? How do they do it? Is it truly worth the high fees for project teams? In the past, the answers to these questions were often hidden behind layers of opaque structures - the gray clauses of market-making protocols, low disclosure standards of trading platforms, and the "default unwritten rules" of market manipulation. Until Coinwatch appeared, a crack began to form in this opacity.
Coinwatch's mission is simple yet powerful: to enable all crypto projects to clearly see what their market makers are doing on trading platforms. In the current regulatory vacuum and weak industry self-discipline, it is becoming a 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
In late 2024, a scandal erupted in the crypto market: the Token of Layer 2 project Movement Labs plummeted immediately upon listing, with nearly 66 million MOVE Tokens being rapidly liquidated within 24 hours of listing, valued at over $38 million. More disturbingly, this sell-off was not from retail panic, but orchestrated covertly by the project's market makers. The project team only discovered later that the Tokens originally intended to "stabilize the market" had been transferred to an identity-obscure intermediary through a shadow agreement without the knowledge of senior management.
This is a warning signal and a portrayal of industry norms. Although most Web3 projects hire market makers (MMs) before Token listing to provide liquidity and stabilize prices, the real power often lies with the invisible party. Project teams typically cannot know: Have market makers fulfilled their agreement? Have they placed orders as required? Have they sold 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 double bind of "structural imbalance and information distortion". On one hand, market makers, originally tasked with providing liquidity and reducing slippage, are frequently induced to become price manipulators due to improper incentive structure - acquiring large amounts of Tokens through option agreements, inflating FDV, and then concentrated selling when prices reach exercise points, essentially evolving into arbitrage traders. On the other hand, the industry's overall transparency is extremely low: critical information such as market maker lists, Token lending agreements, and order data are mostly non-public, making it difficult for project teams to coordinate supervision, and secondary market investors are even less able to clarify the actual executors behind transactions. This asymmetric structure not only amplifies market volatility risks but also severely damages market credibility and investor protection mechanisms.
The opaque black-box mechanism will ultimately only undermine the market's foundational trust. Coinwatch emerged precisely in this trust crisis, attempting to bring a new set of "visible" rules to the industry.
What is Coinwatch: A Transparent Bridge Connecting Project Teams and Market Makers
Who Will Regulate Market Makers? They Decided to Take Action Themselves
Coinwatch's founding team consists of two veteran primary market practitioners who are not "external observers" but have personally experienced how project teams are troubled by liquidity issues after launch.
Co-founder Matt Jobbe previously served as the financial product head at Dapper Labs and CoinList, and was a product manager at Coinbase, having also led commodity derivatives trading at Barclays Bank. He deeply understands the market challenges crypto projects face after trading launch - "without seeing 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 Princeton computer science graduate. From the earliest Token launch platforms, he observed that project teams often have no control over their market-making arrangements, becoming "sacrificial victims who pay but receive no return".
Based on these frontline experiences, they realized that a project's success depends not just on technology and community, but on transparent liquidity management. "We built Coinwatch to restore the ability for project teams to see the truth, rather than continuing to let the black box consume trust," Brian describes their original intention.
One-Stop Insight into Market Maker Truth: How Does Coinwatch Achieve This?
Coinwatch's core product, Coinwatch Track, directly accesses market makers' API data, displaying real-time detailed information such as order depth, buy/sell quotes, trading volume, and trading pair distribution. Unlike traditional methods that can only "estimate" market conditions, Coinwatch reveals actual operational behaviors, helping project teams determine: Am I truly getting the service I paid for?
More importantly, it uses Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology to ensure market makers' API keys are not leaked to any third party, including Coinwatch itself. Sensitive data is processed internally in TEE and uploaded as verifiable summaries, allowing project teams to see results without accessing underlying permissions. This mechanism ensures both security and "non-confrontational transparency".
Additionally, Coinwatch has an Advisory service team to help project teams select suitable market makers, set reasonable liquidity goals, and coordinate CEX listing processes, enabling professional operations in both "who to choose as market makers" and "how to manage market makers".
From Black Box to Transparency: Coinwatch is Establishing a New Consensus in the Crypto Market
Since launching 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".
Project team adoption is also accelerating, with dozens of top ecosystem projects 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 willing to be observed, project teams having the right to view data, and platforms responsible for ensuring neutrality and security. When this protocol becomes the industry default standard, market black boxes will gradually shrink, and speculative gray areas will be replaced by transparent, symmetrical, and contract-driven collaboration mechanisms.
Coinwatch is not a regulatory body; it does not force anyone to disclose information. However, through technology and trust design, it makes "transparency" a voluntary choice, gradually evolving into a "market entry ticket". In a crypto world where regulation has not yet fully arrived, it is rebuilding market order in a more efficient manner.
