Market makers and CEX Listings

TLDR

This is a temperature check for the community’s sentiment regarding CEX listings and the eventual hiring of a market maker to aid in making them happen.

Context

Lido is unequivocally a tier-A DeFi protocol and project. It has proven product-market fit as shown by its TVL and general metrics, an excellent team, great investors and a massive TAM.

However, unlike other top DeFi projects, our governance token is virtually unlisted across centralized exchanges. UNI, COMP, AAVE, SUSHI, etc all have markets in pretty much every top tier CEX, while LDO doesn’t.

In recent months, the topic of CEX listings has been increasingly talked about by Lido community members (1, 2, 3, 4, etc) with a general opinion that I would describe as “we’re looking for and welcoming CEX listings but they’re not happening nowhere near fast enough”.

Market makers

A strategy that many projects, DAOs and protocols have employed to aid with listings and liquidity on CEXes is that of hiring or partnering with a market maker. A recent example of this is Index Coop partnering with Wintermute (1. governance discussion and 2. snapshot vote).

Cypto-native market makers such as GSR, Wintermute and others tend to have good connections and pull with CEXes and can accelerate (or initiate) CEX listings and the subsequent liquidity provision for LDO markets after listings.

Allied with the great work already being done by @jbeezy and BD team, a market maker could translate into a step function change in the speed and efficacy of our CEX listings.

Process

The best process I’ve seen for doing this in DeFi has been Olympus DAO’s open call for market makers to openly put forth proposals and terms. LDO holders would then vote to accept, reject or alter them. (from Olympus: 1. sentiment gauge and 2. decision).

This process brings:

  1. Transparency of the proposals and deal’s terms;
  2. Community involvement, feedback, questioning and criticism;
  3. Open market competition between interested market makers and henceforth better terms for Lido.

Sentiment Gauge:

To assess the general sentiment of the Lido community regarding this idea/possibility, before discussing next steps:

    1. LDO does not need CEX listings;
    1. CEX listings are needed & add value but current pace of progress is satisfactory;
    1. We should consider hiring a market maker but via an alternative process;
    1. We should move forward with the suggested process and open a call for market makers to put forth terms;

0 voters

8 Likes

ldo is a very good project, there will be exchanges actively listed

The one risk I see in DAO a MM deal is regulation risk. Promoting secondary liquidity can get DAO under increased scrutiny, which for OHM does not increase risk profile significantly, but Lido is so far pretty conservative.

4 Likes

A few thoughts

  1. Lido is perpetually selling LDO for liquidity via our incentive program and for TVL via our referral program. One could argue that increasing price and market depth makes these programs more effective but I want to see evidence. Can we look at other protocols to see if such a cause-effect relationship actually exists?

  2. Later this year, LDO owned by well-connected venture firms like Paradigm, Jump, 3AC, Alameda, or Coinbase Ventures is going to unlock due to the vesting schedule. Wouldn’t it be natural to assume that they will help get LDO listed on CEXs because it is in their own best interest to do so? I see a decent chance that we can get the same outcome for free just by waiting.

  1. Gemini just listed LDO.
10 Likes

Personally speaking I’m satisfied with the progress lido is doing but some improvements can make the deal as well. A few month ago coinbase custody has added LDO even tho it’s not yet on CB itself (I don’t have any insight on how much it add volume to LDO). I think this question should be viewed from different angles. From the perspective of an investor the biggest question that arises is, how it will bring stability to the token. LDO is quite volatile and I think in term of its values it’s not at a fair price. However I think it’s due to the vesting period and thus the token outflow that might be sold on the open market. Considering the future of lido being a DAO, I feel undecided. On the one hand cex and a more liquid market lead to higher diversification in terms of hands holding LDO as dao token, conversely giving a market maker control over LDO might lead in the wrong direction since I would love to see lido less concentrated. Especially looking at the sheer quantity of AUM.
If cex I would rather see LDO on one top quality tier exchanges like Coinbase which consider a listing due to project quality of Lido rather than being bribed.

2 Likes

Thanks!

Yes, I’ve found market makers that work via this process are more than happy to disclose very specific deal terms in the open. Examples:

  1. Wintemute’s gOHM MM proposal;
  2. GSR’s OHM MM proposal;
  3. Wintermute’s INDEX MM proposal.
1 Like

I think the first stage is making $LDO liquidity better across DEXs… or adding more value to $LDO tokens

3 Likes

Yes, let’s invite proposals from multiple MMs and go from there. Definitely support this.

3 Likes

wouldn’t token economics make these programs more effective?

MM’s and CEX just increase liquidity. to generate actual demand/utility outisde of speculation it would be nice if the LDO token was more than just ‘governance’

as MEV is consensus layer, shouldnt staking LDO result in MEV rewards and likely LDO rewards on top of that (can be a small %). why would this not incentivize holding LDO?

1 Like

furthering this thought, pretty sure the wormhole deployer dumped 7 figures of lido, i think this is jump. generally speaking the ldo chart has not made a higher high and is in a general down trend. its likely the reason for this is that there is currently NO REASON to hodl the lido token, it is just speculation.

if LIDO DAO is truly “perpetually selling LDO for liquidity” and the price of LDO is generally on a downward trend, is this not evidence that something needs to be done beyond a MM And CEX? the market generally does not view LDO token of importance bc it has no utility besides “governance”.

its in constant dump mode. SO if LDO will be perpetually sold, ever increasing supply and the demand is lacking, well then im just providing liquidity for venture firms and team to dump on me. there MUST be utility for the LDO token, or we will suffer the same fate as all other DeFi governance tokens - goblin town.

pretty weird no one rly seems to care about this … only priority seems to bring more supply onto the market, without meeting demand … blz sir muh familie

3 Likes

MEV and priority fees will be re-staked without having to stake your LDO.

1 Like

this should be our marketing slogan

“ we are perpetually selling LDO for liquidity”

for u plebs, this means that supply dump has no end and u are here to pay off founders and VCs for 100x, welcome.

maybe we should just become the zCash chart as they are also “perpetually selling for liquidity”

down and to the right, from first principles

The wormhole deployer sales have been relentless lately…

Some comments:


  • Although I agree that researching new possible tokenomics improvements for LDO is important and should be pursued, I’d say that it is a separate/independent discussion from the one in this topic.

  • Also agree that this is a problem given current sentiment about (DeFi) governance tokens. However LDO already has higher direct utility then, for example, UNI since both control the respective treasuries though Lido already accrues fees.

  • I think you raised some good concerns across your messages but don’t think the negativity is helpful.
3 Likes

appreciate the replies

hard to not be negative when its just constant supply on the mkt, and no interest by the team to meet demand - except literally paying people to listen to a twitter spaces once lol

its a case of misaligned incentives w the team being up 100x already … would be nice to see an organic community be prioritized as opposed to SOLELY mercenary capital …

1 Like

With a week passed since the initial post, and with (at the time of this writing) 60% of the votes in the sentiment check in favor of the option:

Should we create a new forum topic with the open call for market makers to put forth their proposed terms?

Receiving them is non binding and as such would only bring free optionality to the DAO and community (in my view).

1 Like

Hurry up ,because the merge is coming,we dont have so much time to waste!

1 Like

How do you think the merge coming affects the issue being discussed here?

Not paying attention to cex and economic models is stupid