A review of more than 150 leading crypto protocols found that disclosure of market-making agreements is almost nonexistent, despite those agreements’ clear impact on token trading and liquidity. Research by advisory firm Novora showed fewer than 1% of projects publish any market-maker terms; across the dataset only one protocol, decentralized liquidity platform Meteora, had publicly shared details via its 2025 Annual Token Holder Report.
Novora evaluated protocols across major sectors — decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, perpetual futures, layer-1 and layer-2 networks, bridges and centralized exchange tokens — covering projects with fully diluted valuations from roughly $40 million to $45 billion. The firm used a binary transparency framework focused on disclosure practices and third-party data coverage, cross-checking public sources including Artemis, Token Terminal, Dune, DeFiLlama and Blockworks Research.
“This is the single most consequential transparency gap in the industry,” Novora founder Connor King wrote on X, noting that comparable agreements are routinely disclosed in traditional markets. “In crypto, every market participant operates without this information.”
The review also identified a wider investor-relations shortfall: while 91% of protocols produced trackable revenue, only 18% published quarterly updates and just 8% issued token holder reports. Third-party analytics coverage was broadly mature, with coverage rates above 85% on major platforms, indicating that raw data often exists even when formal reporting and communications do not.
Sector-level findings were uneven. Perpetual futures platforms and decentralized exchanges tended to score better on disclosure and value-accrual transparency, while layer-1 and infrastructure projects lagged despite larger market caps.
Opaque market-maker deals have drawn regulatory and market scrutiny. Token loan arrangements and models that lend tokens to market makers around listings have been criticized for creating incentives to sell borrowed tokens and depress prices; the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has previously brought charges against entities it described as crypto market makers for manipulation.
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