Two of this year’s most chaotic token blowing-movement Labs’ Move Scandal and the collapse of Mantra’s surrounding shock waves through Crypto’s market-making companies.
In both cases, rapid pricing accidents revealed hidden actors, questionable token unlock and alleged side agreements that blind market participants, where more than 90% dropped within hours at the end of April without any apparent catalyst.
Unlike traditional funding, where market manufacturers supply orderly bid-ash spreads at regulated venues, crypto market manufacturers often operate more like high-stakes commercial tables.
They don’t just cite prices; They sell pre-launching token distributions, accept lockups, structure liquidity for centralized exchanges and sometimes take equity or advisory efforts.
The result is a cloudy space where the liquidity provision is tangled with private offers, tokenomics and often insider policy.
A Coindesk exposure at the end of April showed how some movement laboratories managers collided with their own market manufacturer to dump $ 38 million to move on the open market.
Now some companies are questioning whether they have been too relaxed to trust counterparties. How do you uncover a position when token -lock plans are opaque? What happens when handshakes act quietly overriding DAO suggestions?
“Our approach now includes more comprehensive preliminary discussions and educational sessions with project teams to ensure that they thoroughly understand market making mechanics,” Hong Kong-based Metalpha’s market-making department told Coindesk in an interview.
“Our deal structures have evolved to emphasize long -term strategic adaptation to short -term performance metrics, which contains specific security measures against unethical behavior, such as excessive token dumping and artificial trading volume,” it said.
Behind the scenes, conversations are intensified. DEAL conditions are more carefully examined. Some liquidity tables reassess how they sign token risk.
Others require stricter transparency – or go away from grim projects completely.
“Projects no longer accept prestigious reputation at face value, after witnessing how even established players can exploit shade distributions or participate in harmful token sales practices,” noted Metalpha’s head of the web3 Ecosystem Max Sun. “The time of suspected confidence has ended,” he claimed.
Under the polished surface of token launch messages and marketing agreements lies another layer of cryptofination-the secondary OTC market, where locked tokens quietly changes hands well before the earned cliffs hit the public eye.
These agreements under the table, often beaten between early backers, funds and syndicates, are now distorting supply dynamics and crooked price discovery, some dealers say. And for market manufacturers who are tasked with providing orderly liquidity, they become an increasingly opaque and dangerous variable.
“The secondary OTC market has changed the dynamics of industry,” said my Jung, analyst at Presto Research, who runs a market-making unit. “If you look at tokens with suspicious price action – like $ layer, $ about, $ moving and others – they are often the ones most actively traded in the secondary OTC market.”
“The entire supply and vesting plan has been distorted because of these off-market offers, and for cash is the real challenge to find out when the supply is actually unlocking,” Jung added.
In a market where the price is fiction and supply are negotiated in the back rooms, the real risk is not volatility for dealers – it is to believe that the float is what the White Book and the founders say it is.
Read more: Movement laboratories secretly promised advisers millions in tokens, leaked documents showing
