The Best Market Makers in 2025

Many crypto users, founders, and investors still underestimate the role of Market Makers in the successful development of a particular project, and this is one of the most key factors in the Web3 industry. It is from the competent choice of Market Maker (MM) that it depends how your project will develop, your profit and if you are an investor, will your investments be safe?!

We conducted a large investigation over 3 months, interviewed more than 400 projects from the top 500, top 1000 and top 3000 by CMC, more than 100 VCs, learned their experience with different MM teams, how they work, figure out their models, tried to understand all the “pitfalls” and find out the largest and best players in this market with opinions from first persons.

Frankly speaking, after our investigation, we understood why 90% of projects, if not more, quickly fall into the abyss after TGE. We relied on objective and independent data from CryptoRank.io, CoinMarketCap.com, CoinGecko.com. And it is surprising why even experienced VCs pay little attention to this, but they lose huge amounts of money there, not to mention ordinary retail users?!

Now let's get down to business. There are quite a few Market Makers in the crypto industry, but the largest and most well-known players in the market right now are the following, both in terms of number of projects, reputation and volumes:

 

DFW Labs, Wintermute, Ange Labs, G20, CLS Global, Kairon Labs, Trireme, GSR
 

We intentionally do not indicate smaller teams because it is impossible to determine reliable and objective feedback about them. Market Makers' work models can be briefly divided into 2 types:

1. Loan Model (Option Model) - 80% of MM teams work on it

2. Retainer Model (Profit Share Model) - 20% of MM teams work on it

 

The following teams work according to the Loan Model: DFW Labs, Wintermute, G20, CLS Global, GSR, Wintermute and many others. According to the Retainer Model (Profit Share Model) Ange Labs, Kairon Labs, Trireme

Why is the Loan Model Usually Death for The Project and Loss of Money for Investors?!

Many projects fall into a tricky "honey trap" from Market Makers and choose the Loan Model. Of course, Market Makers know how to present it beautifully and can call it Investments in the project, Liquidity Provider, Options etc. Projects think that they are "in the black", they are given money, they are provided liquidity, but in reality there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Most Market Makers deliberately choose this model, because it brings them the most profit, and the project is deprived of all real liquidity and where all the profit from traders, users goes to the MM teams, and not to the projects. They (Market Makers) earn millions on this, essentially spending nothing.

 

Let's take a closer look, here are the comments we received from project founders (for security reasons, they asked to remain anonymous), who received millions of dollars from large funds before TGE, the projects were in the top 500 by CMC at the start,and now most of them have dropped out of the top 1000-2000-3000, and many are on the verge of bankruptcy, all because they chose the wrong MM team and believed the beautiful words about the Loan Model and how “good” it is:

 

G: “We were offered an investment of $250k in exchange for MM services. The company has a very famous name in Web3, they told everything very beautifully, immediately made connections with many exchanges. We, not understanding the catch, fell for their bait. The agreement was very complicated and very tricky, but we were sure that their Strike conditions were not a problem for us at all, especially considering the millions in reserve. In the end, MM simply and openly killed our project, the value of our token, playing down, where we simply and very quickly burned all our liquidity and never saw the slightest profit. Simply put, the MM team played against us, having all the information, insights and deliberately ruined us. Yes, they made millions on this, and we lost almost everything and in the eyes of investors, the community, we are the bad ones, and no one even knows about the MM team and how insidiously they pumped all the funds out of us.”

 

J: “Only after six months we realized that Market Maker had been playing against us all this time, had pulled out all our liquidity and was taking all the profits for itself. Only after we had broken our Loan agreement with the old and very well-known MM and had switched, on the recommendation of one of our VCs, in Ange Labs on the retainer model, it was only then that we realized that it turns out that the price of our token may not only not fall, but may also grow, moreover, for the first time we began to receive profit, which we had not seen for 6 months, and lost millions”

 

N. - representative of a well-known VC who invested in dozens of projects in 2024:

“In our research department, DD of any project is very complex, we request many parameters from projects, but never before have we paid such close attention to the choice of the MM team. But after a number of unsuccessful launches, the loss of millions of dollars, we conducted our own investigation and found out that all losses occur in the overwhelming majority of cases, when projects choose Loan Model. This is now a huge red flag for us, especially if we see DFW Labs, GSR and others using Loan Model as MM teams. This is always a token price killer and everything related to the projects. We now only invest in projects with a proven MM team with a retainer model".
 

"Previously, Kairon Labs, Trireme, and Ange Labs showed the best ROI results for us. But the latest launches by Kairon Labs and Trireme were  unsuccessful, to put it mildly, while Ange Labs is still holding its own, so we confidently recommend projects to contact them. They are real professionals in both tokenomics and strategies, and most importantly, the team does not play against projects. It is a win-win for all parties in the market,” he added.
 

S: “We managed to get into trouble three times, first with Wintermute, then with GSR, then with DWF. I don’t even know which of them is worse. They all dragged us down. Only after some time, a familiar founder of the project said that he had the same problem and the project almost died, but he switched to the retainer model and the project came back to life. I didn’t really understand it then, but I listened to him, held negotiations with Kairon, Trireme and Ange. The first ones are very experienced, but they gave high prices, the second ones seemed weak, but the last ones gave excellent conditions, but also offered cool scenarios and marketing support. Everything is great now, I wish for one thing, why didn't I know about this before”
 

E: “With the Loan Model we had no money for anything, while always owing our MM team according to the strike conditions. And this continued for more than 1 year, now we have switched to another MM team on their profit share model (retainer model) and for the first time we have started making a profit every week. Now we have funds for further development, for marketing, for various tournaments, for prizes, etc. The project has come to life and we have listed on 3 new exchanges!”
 

A. - a representative of one of the largest marketing agencies, with 300+ Web3 Clients, to our question “What MM do your Clients talk about best?” we received the following answer:

“We really have feedback from hundreds of Clients, we personally know almost all MM. We see serious problems with those who are on the Loan Model - they are always in trouble, they are like drug addicts on a needle. They do not work for themselves, but for MM teams. But those who work on the Retainer Model, those who constantly have money and order marketing services from us on a permanent basis. Therefore, whenever possible, we always recommend our Clients to switch to the retainer model, since it is beneficial for us to get a permanent Client, not a one-time one.”
 

And we received hundreds of such comments. Everyone has more or less the same situation, which clearly shows that despite the beautiful words and promises from MM teams - the Loan Model quickly devastates and ruins the project in the long run and, on the contrary, significantly enriches the MM teams themselves who use this model, which is why it is so popular with them.
 

Rating Among Famous Market Makers

We decided not to make a standard rating by numbers, but made it based on negative and positive reviews from hundreds of respondents.

 

Worst Reviews (Descending order):

- DWF Labs (a huge number of negative and angry reviews)
- GSR (overall, not a single positive review)
- Kairon Labs (only recently has a number of companies become negative)


Top Reviews (Descending order):
 

- Ange Labs (a huge number of positive reviews, many even enthusiastic)
- Wintermute (there are a lot of positive reviews, but there are also quite a few negative ones)
- Trireme (there are not many reviews, but there are more positive ones than negative ones, although they exist and the last launches were not the most successful)