The TGE liquidity checklist
Per Messari, only 6 of 41 tracked token sales from 2025 still trade above their sale price. Product rarely kills these projects — listing-day liquidity does. Here are the 8 steps to take between sale close and listing day.
1. Line up your designated market maker before the listing call
Serious exchanges require a designated MM as part of listing review. Binance now requires issuers to publicly disclose their market makers (and bans profit-share/guaranteed-return MM deals). Mid-tier venues like MEXC require you to bring your own MM with funded accounts. If you start the MM search after the exchange asks, you'll negotiate under time pressure — the worst position to sign a liquidity contract in.
2. Map your unlock schedule against planned depth
A cliff unlock into a thin order book is how −60% days happen. Before listing, put your full vesting schedule next to your planned market depth: for every unlock event, know how much sell pressure could hit the book and what depth will absorb it. Your MM should ask for this schedule unprompted — if they don't, that tells you something.
3. Budget inventory separately from fees
Exchanges require working inventory in the MM accounts: roughly $20–60k per mid-tier venue, $100k+ for tier-1 (full cost breakdown here). This capital stays yours — but it must exist. Plan it into your raise allocation, not as an afterthought.
4. Design the day-one book, don't improvise it
Decide before listing: initial spread targets, depth per side, how quoting responds to the first hours of price discovery, and what happens if the price gaps far from the sale price. Listing day is the highest-volume day most tokens ever see — improvising it wastes your one moment of maximum attention.
5. Put KPIs and remedies in the contract
Spread ≤ X bps, depth ≥ $Y within ±2%, uptime ≥ Z% — per venue, per pair, with fee credits when missed. If the contract has no numbers, you bought adjectives.
6. Demand a read-only dashboard from day one
You should be able to see spreads, depth, uptime, inventory and P&L live, without asking. Post-2025, this is the market standard; anything less is operating blind.
7. Never sign quantity-denominated token loans
If the MM's loan is repayable in a fixed number of tokens, they profit from dumping your token and repurchasing cheaper. Value-denominated or nothing — and no low-strike options. (The full red-flag list.)
8. Disclose everything, everywhere
Every side agreement about your token — MM deals, OTC sales of locked tokens, advisor allocations — should be documented and consistent with what you tell exchanges and your community. The biggest collapses of 2025 came from undisclosed agreements surfacing later.
TGE coming up? Send us your token, venues and timeline — you'll get a straight answer and our term-sheet template within 24 hours.
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