Scott Byron explains how Forgd measures real liquidity for token launches

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from the Crypto Coin Show and today on Blockchain Interviews of Scott Byron, Managing Director at Forged coming back on the show to talk about token sales, the success behind them, the failures behind them, liquidity, market making and all of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in creating successful launches and the reasons why token

0:24launches fail and rarely recover when they do. Scott, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time. >> Thanks for having me Ashton. Excited to chat with you today. >> Definitely. This is a very important issue because for any startup you work so hard and if you don't have all the pieces in place when you launch your product and it fails it's hard to recover. So

0:45you really have to have that set out from the get-go and uh understanding what needs to be in place I think uh is is key and I don't think a lot of uh projects that talk to market makers who give lots of promises and uh without sort of seeing on-chain history or more detailed analysis lead down a track that then they can't go back from once they're launched. So

1:10excited to dive into all that today. We'd love to start out with a little bit on Forged for for those who aren't familiar and what uh the vision is and then we can dive into this this latest update. >> Absolutely. Um >> [clears throat] >> Forged in a nutshell is a full-stack capital markets advisor for token projects who are going to conduct a TGE and for really what we focus on is

1:32designing tokenomics, the protocol value flows underneath the hood as well as market maker engagements and exchange listing engagements. Um we're differentiated by a free-to-use self-service platform that we've introduced to now over a thousand different projects pre and post TGE that design their tokenomics, engage market makers and a number of other things in

1:52order to manage the life cycle of their token. >> Definitely. There's so many moving pieces. It's not just let's copy the tokenomics of a successful project and surely ours will succeed. Um, you know, from from a high level what are some of the different areas that a platform that's going to launch a token they have to think about that that forged is advising on?

2:15>> Yeah, absolutely and it's changed a lot in terms of what the crypto market and the investors within the market specifically demand from projects. The overarching theme is maturity, right? So, having a relationship with users and ensuring that the product is something that people aggressively come back to use over periods of time. Um, more synergistically when it comes to

2:37uh, different service providers, market makers and exchanges are the two that come to mind. There's a lot of balanced incentives that are at play and if not constructed with a little bit of know-how, uh, these relationships can often turn very predatory and parasitic. So, we spend a lot of time with founders engaging through those two phases when they engage service providers several

2:57months before TGE. It's necessary to educate everyone on what those incentives are under the hood, how service providers intend to make money and how you can actually get a positive sum structure out of the engagements versus leaking a lot of value to the other side of the equation. >> Mm, very interesting and there's a huge importance on having the

3:18right exchange but also having market makers that can help make that a success coming out of the gate and continued uh, down the road. Uh, and this new report uh, and part of the platform of forged is comparing market makers and you know, not just using their promises but using more data. Can you talk about the importance of market making in a coin first of all?

3:46>> Absolutely. Um, I think more broadly you think about exchanges and the fees that people are willing to pay are often contingent on for instance how much trade volume that exchange does for newly listed altcoins or comparable tokens. Or it really is a question of users and what that platform's distribution looks like in order for a project founder to triangulate what they

4:07are willing to pay for the service of listing that that venue may provide. When it comes to market making a lot of the historical performance data is anecdotal at best and so there's very limited transparency into which market makers have supported which project but on a more granular basis what their actual contributions to the success or lack thereof have been. And that's you

4:29know over the past several years market makers have provided anecdotal data and they have case studies and so forth but often it's not the most transparent side of the industry certainly for someone who is very integral to the success of a project. Um our data platform and really a lot of the provisioning that we have when it comes to transparency is around what market

4:50maker's historical contributions have been and across a you know hundreds of other projects or very large sample size of other projects that we've had run over the platform. So Fortis offers market maker monitoring services which projects can get a very granular insights and analysis on how their market maker's performing but more broadly relative to the entire

5:10market. What we do is anonymize that data and aggregate it on a per market maker basis and that allows us to compare apples to apples much easier such that when you are making a decision down the line as to what service provider you want to work with and what the engagement structure is that is going to be balanced we can shine light on not only the commercial aspect that

5:31they the service provider will propose but much more importantly what the historical performance and adherence to things like KPIs have been again over a large number of historical engagements. And so that's really what we're trying to pair together with the commercial aspect of market making proposals and give a little bit more light into the degree of confidence that a project or a

5:51founder can have when making their decision. >> Definitely. And as a a retail trader, you often go to the exchange and you have no idea what's happening behind the scenes. You might see some big orders sort of near the middle point that's like they're popping up and they're disappearing. And you're like, is that a person? Is that a market maker? What's happening there? But for

6:14the the protocol and the owners of of that asset, that is super important. Um but there is there are choices to make in which market making firm you you go with. And what is what does that landscape look like? And what's in in the data set? Like, are there, you know, are there five options to choose from or are there a hundred market makers to choose from? You know,

6:40how much do they have to siphon through? >> So, our platform has 30 plus market makers integrated that can submit proposals as well as provide Forge with historical data in order for us to track their performance as well as things like again, their KPI adherence. When a project is selecting a market maker, usually what the starting point is is a differentiation between two types of

7:02engagement structures. These are historically referred to as loan plus call option and retainer plus working capital. And the market maker will typically educate a project on which model of the two business models or two engagement structures may be a better fit for that project. Some market makers specialize in one engagement structure over the other, but that will often be

7:23the first interaction or the first touch point when a founder is starting to learn about what that relationship will look like down the line with such a market maker. From there, market makers are often times proposing structures that are going to be most beneficial to them. Um and that can be, you know, again, retainer and working capital or loan plus call option. The difference between

7:43these at a very high level is that one business model, the retainer and working capital engagement structure, requires a project to be what we would refer to as stablecoin rich. They have to provide stablecoins in addition to tokens, which is very costly, especially in today's market where projects are launching the token later and later. And the private

8:01market landscape may be a little bit more difficult than years in the past. And so, it's not far or it's not too uncommon for a project to be a little bit more cash constrained. Therefore, these more expensive engagements can be something that isn't going to be seen as frequent versus the loan plus call option structure only requires a loan of tokens. And that's going to be much

8:21cheaper for a project to afford. So, right now in the current market landscape, the vast majority of token engagements from the market making standpoint are typically under this loan plus call option structure. And from there, projects can engage market makers typically in one business model. So, they may have two or three service providers that are all falling under the

8:41same engagement structure. What Forge always advises is that we never mix the two business models. And we can get into that a little bit later. >> Mhm. Oh, very interesting. So, you know, as I mentioned, it's sort of opaque from the retail side. But, so what you're saying is these market makers, they actually are submitting part of their historical data,

9:02performance, and success to Forge so that you can accumulate that. And now, project that that's a inflow of potential projects for them if they're on the top of Forge's list. >> Absolutely. Forge was built um with the idea of a two-sided marketplace in in mind. In the sense that projects are required to engage market makers. They are a necessary and integral part to the

9:24success or lack thereof when it comes to the price performance and the liquidity footprint and the sustainability of the project writ large. That being said, we don't believe that the decision as to who to work with should be made explicitly on anecdotal data or or data that comes directly from the source that could be biased and could be incomplete

9:44in nature. And so, we're trying to serve as and we've you know, made a degree of wedge within being that neutral platform that can provide what is the market maker's historical performance alongside what their commercial proposal looks like. That way when you're making a decision as a founder or someone who's leading the go-to-market for a token project, you

10:05have all the necessary information to assess what someone's promising you versus what they're historically capable of doing. And it's very critical that we look at the two lenses there together, not just one in isolation. >> Completely agree and I think everyone is for successful token launches and what we saw in 2025 was not not very many successful launches or at

10:29least they launched but then you know, the momentum dies off pretty quickly especially on the on the 1010 crash, a lot of altcoins were down 80 90% and recovered a little bit but but not like Bitcoin and Ethereum that are you know, maybe down 30 40. You're way down. Um can you talk about the new launches and altcoin um just sentiment in 2025 and what shifted?

10:57It was supposed to be great with the new administration, all coins were going up. What structural shifts changed for launches that made it hard to be so successful? >> place at the time of token launch

11:32versus, you know, 2021 or the years surrounding that cycle, it was very much okay to launch pre-business model, pre-revenue, and even sometimes pre-product. Um it's not, you know, um uncommon even last year to have seen very large token projects that launched the mainnet or launched the core application uh at the same time that the token came out. And so, there could be

11:57testnet phases beforehand, but there's really no, you know, structural business in place by the time that the liquidity event happens with the token itself. And in order for a token to sustain more fair price discovery, there need to be buyers that are natural and organic. And those often come from, again, these retail communities and such. If you've

12:17had a product to launch uh much later than when retail was hoping to see traction and hoping to see more of that mature development, what happens is they don't want to buy the token, and there's a lot more supply than demand naturally because of the way that exchanges require fees or airdrops occur and other dynamics on that side that really necessitate a large amount of buy-side

12:39demand to offset whatever sell pressure will exist. If there's no demand in order to offset those supply of tokens that are available at TGE, again, to airdrop recipients or exchanges or other counterparties, well, price is going to depreciate. And that's because there is a larger amount of supply than demand. So, there are structural changes within

12:59the you know, pre-launch market, um structural changes within the sort of public sale market as well, that have also contributed. But that's overwhelmingly, you know, going to be the main factor, biggest factor, is that people have expected a much more mature token project by the time that a TGE occurs. >> [snorts] >> Mhm. I've definitely noticed uh a

13:20lengthier uh time of testnets, you know, running for a year or two, um and then the token comes out with the mainnet or even launching the mainnet and then the token comes out a year later. So they're definitely holding off. Part of it currently right now, maybe it's the market conditions where they're they're extending the the time of their testnet

13:42but in in a good way. We're seeing more of the product being built so then when we launch there's hopefully a higher chance of success. Of course, you need all this market making and these other factors as well but I think the product and customers and revenue is is huge and fundamental. >> Absolutely agree. >> Yeah. Um Let's talk about what happens when the

14:06token launches and you know, maybe they thought they chose the right market maker and it went down within the first hours or within the first day and why the chance of recovery is so low and what happens when the momentum spews out after a short amount of time. >> There are many such cases. Um often times there are un unknown unknowns in the sense that

14:33when projects engage service providers again, be it market makers, liquidity providers or exchanges, it's not often the first calculation or priority of theirs to understand where expected value comes from and expected value for most institutions comes from taking profit early because that's when price is often the highest in the past recent history, right? And so

14:58eventually projects blame anecdotally market makers or exchanges or even airdrop recipients for aggressively selling down the token immediately after launch. What Forge hopes to bring to light is a degree of transparency when it comes to market makers to understand what types of trade activity that they've been conducting immediately after launch and on a go forward basis.

15:19So the data that we collect is related to the depth of liquidity that's provided. This is depth at various thresholds from what we would call mid price or the prevailing price of the asset. We also collect the top of book spreads, so the difference between the um price of best buy and the price of best sell. And then we also collect what we would refer to as the fill order

15:39volume. So trade volume can be broken down into what we'd refer to as a maker and a taker. A maker is someone who is a passive provider of liquidity and a taker is someone who's an aggressive remover of liquidity. Really this comes down to limit orders for makers and market orders for takers. That's all that it it breaks down to, but what we can then consolidate is a

16:03reasonable uh dashboard in order to assimilate market maker activity or market maker participation versus the entire rest of the market. And there very well may be speculators or onlookers or other participants outside of the market makers who are inducing either aggressive price appreciation or aggressive price depreciation. But the dashboard serve as a you know, sort of

16:25command center in order to see was it the market maker that I contracted that could have been influencing price one way or the other or was it the result of the entire market. And when it comes to the market makers, really what we're trying to dig down into is what have they been doing since launch? Were they realizing any of their expected value? And more importantly, were they actually

16:47meeting the KPIs that they promised that they would meet? And so projects don't necessarily understand or have to know if the market maker was doing their job or better with or excuse me, they don't have to know if the market maker was uh not doing their job, what they do need to know is if the market maker has been meeting or beating their KPIs. And with

17:07that foundation of liquidity that the market maker is providing, reasonable trade activity can occur. People can take profit so long as there is that resting foundation of orders for people to buy and sell from. >> Definitely. And speaking of taking profit and that early on the supply side being high, the tokenomics and then the vesting schedules for private investors or for

17:30the founders, you know, they they they widely vary. Um I've seen more just like, you know, 5% of the private investors being unlocked or zero or like a year cliff. And maybe it's I don't I don't know, maybe, you know, the the It's a balance of the market maker being successful and trying to balance that supply side pressure with the retail interest at the same

17:53time. Um is there a a magic formula for managing the the private investors and and the founders s- and balancing how much they can sell when versus the market making aspect of it? >> I think industry standard has evolved now towards insiders, so investors, core team members, advisors, all having a one-year cliff followed by one or two years of a linear unlock of whatever

18:21their allocation was. Of course, there are, you know, exceptions to this and projects may have smaller unlocks that are that occur within the first 12 months of launch, again, for those insiders. But historically speaking, that was much more common. The industry standard has evolved over time. Ultimately, the market conditions dictate typically if you want to have a

18:43really high float or if you can sustain a really high float or initial circulating supply at TGE. These are, you know, more than 50% of the total tokens circulating at the immediate start of trading versus market conditions that are much less favorable may necessitate that a project constrain circulating supply at TGE. And they can eliminate things that otherwise would be

19:07um superfluous. So, larger community campaigns that try to do um you know, sort of like cross uh project promotional activities in order to get marginal new users may work in a bull market and you can sustain airdrops of larger size to individuals who may not be in your community but on the outskirts or, you know, tertiary part or versus bear markets and markets that we've seen more

19:34actively in the past couple of months necessitate that when you're giving out free money, you do so to a very core group of users who are adding value to your product. Now, it can be argued that regardless of bull or bear market, you should always only be providing, you know, airdrops and other rewards to those that are adding value, but the case stands that you can be a little bit

19:54more liberal with these decisions when there's a massive amount of organic and speculative demand in the market. Right now, we're not seeing that and so initial supply will oftentimes tighten, even sometimes down to the single-digit percentage of total token supply available at or at token generation event. >> Mhm. [clears throat] Yeah, the the airdrops is it's a mess

20:16all over. I think it's a get it successful. I think I can count on one finger maybe. I think Hyperliquid's done pretty well in a sense that it it's above where the airdrop is. Some of these layer twos had successful airdrops, but you know, a year or two later with the market conditions, it's not where it was. But, a lot of these ones they're I I I think that's a

20:39uh that might be a quick go-to for founders and projects that think it's going to help. Just like let's do an airdrop to get the token out to more people and it almost always backfires, whether it's, you know, community being mad about the price or um you know, low low quality community members. >> Absolutely. And when you scatter the airdrop that ultimately is, you know,

21:01only a few single-digit percentage of supply and you're launching at a modest FDV, the US dollar value of the tokens received is typically a disappointing amount. And so, users then move aggressively to sell down those tokens. And a lot of times founders have thought if they distribute a smaller amount of tokens or a lower US dollar value, the people will just hold it and it's dust

21:23in their wallet, quote unquote. They won't care to move and sell it very quickly. That phenomenon hasn't necessarily proved true. People tend to take the profit that's been provided to them for either doing nothing or doing very little work. >> Definitely. Is there a sign, say you're a retail trader and you're looking on the exchange, there's a new token that's

21:43out, and you know, the the success on the first day or two, it's it's up and it's like, "Oh, this is doing really well." Are there signs to look for to determine that um you know, there may be an issue with this market maker or you know, how how can you tell uh if this is just a short-term fad versus successful launch uh for, you know, mid or long-term?

22:07>> Sure. Um very easily looking at the order book. Uh crypto trader or someone who's, you know, had some experience in markets in general should be able to understand if there's a deep amount of what we'd refer to resilient liquidity or if liquidity is sparse and thin. And that will be the first signal to any trader or onlooker as to if the market itself is healthy,

22:31right? If there's a large amount of resting orders to buy or sell an asset at any point in time, very tight to the price that exists today, that signals that people are willing to take on risk around where price is trading. And it's probably a reflection and the current price is probably a reflection of a market value that people agree upon. Versus if there's very thin liquidity

22:53available to trade an asset, even though it may be trading up into the right, there's an argument to be made that not as many people are willing to buy and sell that asset and therefore, maybe the price isn't actually reflecting fair market value. And so, that's a fairly easy sort of checkpoint, if you will. Other than that, I think things like sustainable trade volumes and robust

23:14spot and derivative markets help contribute to the maturity of an asset, but those can be things that evolve, you know, over the course of many, many weeks or months post TGE. And so, in the short windows following the launch, oftentimes liquidity is going to be the easiest signal to assess a is a market maker doing their job, or are a lot of other people in addition to a market

23:36maker willing to provide liquidity. Again, speaking to the confidence that they have in the trade action or the price action that we've seen thus far. >> Definitely. And when you launch a successful token, normally it's on multiple exchanges. Um how how does it you're you're just using one market maker, and they tie into all the exchanges? Can you talk about making

23:57that a success and ensuring sort of it's balanced? >> Absolutely. And and it's not easy. When it comes to the number of market makers, typically there will be two or three liquidity providers on a project that will say has three to four centralized exchanges. If a project is only working with one centralized exchange, or one decentralized venue, um and maybe they

24:20plan to launch on two DEXes, but single mainnet, maybe it's more common that they'll use one provider. That being said, exchanges are not for lunch. They cost money in order to list. And so, there needs to be some sort of ROI or expected value calculation done ahead of actually agreeing or provide or uh pursuing any listing in particular. When it comes to what a project's willingness

24:43is to work with different exchanges, you always want to work with that exchange that is the highest caliber, but still within your budget range. And so, we advise projects to put together a budget, usually before their exchange listing conversations, or before the commercial negotiations at least and to really outline what they're willing to spend across exchanges. From there, we

25:04can break down what's feasible from a listing profile perspective or an exchange sequencing perspective for the day one launch. Really it comes down to understanding what are the project's goals, how do they want to conduct their token generation event or transition into the secondary markets and then we back into what exchange listings make sense. There is of course a variation of

25:26quality across Eastern exchanges as well as some of the Western exchanges, but it's always good to make sure that the token does launch in global markets and that the project is accessible by people in both the East and the West. >> That's a great point on balancing the East and the West. You know, often I'm talking to founders and you know, they always say you know, the Southeast

25:48Asian markets are are hotter than than the US markets and whether the project is based there and they already have a bit of a community base versus a North American project. How might that affect where a project is when they come to forge and they're looking at market makers? Does that matter where they're based or where the initial community members came from?

26:14>> The short answer is no and you're getting to a very important point that you can't decide where your base is where you'll only launch, right? One decentralized trading and decentralized exchanges are accessible by the masses. We'll say the masses of those that are in crypto today, but that's accessible globally. Now centralized exchanges usually have more

26:40walled off gardens, right? There's very few exchanges that straddle both the East and the West and so when it comes to distribution there is much more speculation. There is much more of a vibrant user base and trading ecosystem in Asia than there is in the west when it comes to newly listed all coins. So, if you're a western project, you absolutely cannot leave out the call it

27:03Asia go-to-market strategy, but it can definitely be a barbell approach where you lean into the demographics that you may have at home, and you also cater to the international demographics such that you have tied together hopefully more of a global community together. >> Yeah, that's really important. And you mentioned decentralized exchanges versus

27:26centralized. How how when a team is looking to launch, you know, is there a strategy behind launching on both? Or you know, I've I've heard of projects that want to skip the fees of the centralized exchange, so they try to do a decentralized strategy and and the market making differentiation there. How walk me through a a a token project looking to launch advised by Forge

27:49decentralized versus centralized exchanges? >> We always take the approach that the two venue types, centralized and decentralized, should be paired together. You never want to isolate your project in only one or the other, and it's doing you a disservice really um with the amount of users that you can reach and the types of users. So, generally speaking, um centralized

28:11exchanges will have much broader distribution, larger quantities of users, maybe with smaller balance sizes on average, um and a little bit less crypto-native sophistication or know-how. Versus the on-chain sort of decentralized trading communities are typically going to be a much smaller group of individuals or number of users who are actively trading on a daily

28:33basis, but these are people who are what I would argue is very crypto-native. And so, their savviness and their level of sophistication is very important, and those are often the users of your protocol making them even more critical in order to reach on day one. Because they're going to be power users of most applications versus those users on centralized exchanges, you want to make

28:56sure that they're included in that initial price discovery debate. So, really you never want to isolate between one side, either centralized or just decentralized. And so, it's important that market makers are also aware as to what the project or what the liquidity profile of a project will look like after TGE. If they'll decide to choose one mainnet in order to more concentrate

29:19liquidity on chain, or if potentially the token will exist across multiple mainnets and they're trying to appeal to different on chain demographics. That's more tertiary, but regardless, market makers should exist for both centralized exchange trade activity as well as decentralized exchange liquidity provisioning. >> Mhm. Yeah, I think it's important as

29:38well. You know, you have >> [clears throat] >> different audiences there. And when the market makers, you know, when you're choosing a market maker for the launch, is there a difference in how they work on a decentralized exchange because the order book, from what I understand it, at least with some of the the AMM and how a DEX works, do the market makers have to have

30:02different is different costs there or or different type of work to make it a successful launch on both centralized and decentralized exchange at the same time? >> Absolutely. Um just very simply speaking, most decentralized trade activity will occur through what's referred to as concentrated liquidity pools. And these are just a type of automated market

30:25maker sort of trading environment. And so, market makers are providing liquidity very closely around the prevailing price. They provide bids in order to buy the tokens at prices that are slightly below the prevailing price, and they provide offers to sell down tokens at prices that are just slightly above the prevailing price. And that tight range of liquidity or the

30:46concentrated range as it's referred to, will often times be adjusted and that will be adjusted based upon the trade flows that the market maker sees. Conversely, when you have a centralized exchange, this is where continuous limit order books exist and that is going to be more of a traditional style way of providing liquidity for an asset. The way that equities work, the way that

31:06other more traditional you know, institu- instruments will operate is on an order book themselves. And so, this allows market makers to still provide bids and offers, but in a little bit more of a traditional manner. So, market makers do different work across the two venue types, centralized and decentralized exchanges, but it's still necessary to have the professional

31:27liquidity provider. One, [snorts] because they have a skill set that most of us as normal retail participants don't have or founders, but also two, there's so much going on around a token generation event and it's not really the founder's job in order to maintain liquidity as much as it is to maintain the business itself. Now, while liquidity is fundamental usually to the

31:50success of a business when a token launch happens because the token's integral to the business itself, liquidity should be something that's outsourced and that should be done by these professional trading firms. >> Definitely. I agree. It's It's already a lot running the business and then you add in the the market separate and it's like running It's like running a public

32:12company. It's like it's like two companies. You know, with the delay of the token launch for longer as they're building the business, I think that's a good thing, but it gives right now at least in the current market conditions, they've been holding off on token launches and waiting for an opportunity where it looks like a bull market or there's a lot of more optimism

32:35in the market. How much time do the founding teams need to you know, when once they decide, okay, the market looks good. You know, okay, now we have to talk to exchanges, talk to market makers, plan the launch. You know, typically how much time, you know, a month or two or more does that take? >> It depends how much a founder will be involved. So, if the

33:00founder is going to lead everything themselves, often times they need three to four or even more months as lead time before they intend to launch. And that's if no number one priority is the token launch itself. If you're balancing things like an internal beta of the product that is really not allowed to or is not open yet to the public and so you're, you know, doing a lot of

33:22internal testing, iterating through initial design and feedback sessions. It's ultimately going to be a split priority and you need more than four or five months. But, if a founder is going to engage advisors, that timeline can vary. Timeline can vary because often times advisors will help run processes in parallel. That may be things like designing tokenomics, but it may more

33:43relate to these service provider engagements like a market maker or like an exchange where advisors are willing to roll up their sleeves, act as a core contributor and help expedite whatever processes that they can. And so, it varies as to when a project will have everything related to launch nailed down in terms of market makers, in terms of exchanges, having contracts executed

34:05with both That can be anywhere from a week or two weeks before launch until that stuff is done. Or in some cases for projects that have had more lead time, maybe that extends out to a month before launch. But, it does require efforts all the way until that token launch and that's obviously not the end of the road. >> Definitely, it's just the beginning. Um

34:25and you know, I would consider the market conditions right now for smaller launches to be it is possible to be successful, but it's definitely tougher. What What do you think about the current market conditions for, you know, the middle of 2026? I've I've spoken to a lot of projects that were [clears throat] planning for March, April, May launches in 2026. Maybe I

34:48should introduce them to you to to have a better success chance of success. But [clears throat] if there's one thing to be or or one or two things to be successful in a a pessimistic market with advisory and market makers, you know, what do you think is that key? >> I think the most critical key with these service providers is again understanding where

35:14expected value comes from. How do service providers intend to profit off of the engagement or commercial deal I that you have with them? And that's really just the starting point. From there, it's knowing what the best practices are in order to engage a market maker or an exchange or someone else that acts again as a service provider on your behalf.

35:34Getting very nuanced when it comes to token distribution is of course a necessity. As we talked about before where the market is much less forgiving, there's much less organic demand right now relative to a year ago or even years past. And so it doesn't require that a founder avoids doing airdrops or avoids public sales or avoids these distribution events at TGE, it just requires that

36:00they're very thoughtful about those exercises. And so it can help if a project has, you know, launched products or launched whatever their fundamental application is many, many months or even a year before they conduct TGE, they've probably weeded out a lot of the speculative activity. Now in other cases, founders that are moving more aggressively to launch in markets like

36:21this that maybe don't have a core community yet and they haven't launched product in order to iterate and see if the business model works or not, then they're going to find themselves in a trickier position regardless of how you structure these engagements down the line. So, there's only so much that market maker engagements and exchange advisory can really have for an impact. Now, this

36:42is I would say half of the equation. The other half as we've discussed a lot today is the actual maturity or fundamentals of the project. >> Yeah, definitely. You have to have your your your tees crossed yourself before you go [clears throat] launching and and I wouldn't come to an advisory firm being like we don't have much but make it successful, you know,

37:05it's a it's a two-part system. But, I do [clears throat] agree that having more transparency in market making and understanding the data which has been so important now to have a successful launch is so important. It's because if you if you don't launch successfully, you could be wasting years years of time building up to that momentum and when it flops,

37:28you're in a pit that is hard to get out of. >> Absolutely. Um because these products are so early, there is diminished loyalty, we'll say, relative to a lot of traditional web two products that people use on a day-to-day basis. And so, the switching cost is, I would argue, not as high as it is in traditional financial applications or other software applications. And so,

37:50there's always someone launching after you. If price doesn't perform to the expectations of speculators and retail participants, it's very frequent that they move on to the next opportunity. So, the launch is very critical to even the long-term success of not only the token project but ultimately the business itself. >> Definitely. And if there are projects

38:13that are launching that want to know more about this new market making liquidity transparency, Uh, do you guys publish more on that or how should they reach out? >> So, going to forged.com, uh, users will be able to see pre-login research around token launches and exchange listings and more high-level information. Creating an account will then enable you to go and dig into both

38:39the market maker or a few process as well as more tactically what the leaderboard looks like and how we segment a lot of that post-TGE trade-related data in order to consolidate how market makers perform after they've engaged with a project. So, they can go to forged.com. You can create an account for free and poke around there. You'll be able to find the

38:59market maker leaderboard. >> Sounds great, Scott. I appreciate your insights on this. It's so important. Uh, we all want successful launches and get getting those pieces together and, you know, for the for the sake of not just the token price, but for adoption of of blockchain technology uh, to more people because there's obvious benefits there. Um, but we need to be able to launch

39:20properly and sustain that momentum so we can get those actual products into the hands of new people and get them integrated into digital assets. Uh, thank you guys for for this new uh, data set in the liquidity transparency. Transparency is key in in blockchain and I feel like in the past market makers and have not been so transparent. Uh, especially on the

39:41retail side if you're not a [clears throat] part of it, you you really know nothing about what's going on in the back end just hoping it works. And uh, I think there'd definitely be improvements. So, yeah, thank you so much for the time. >> Awesome. It was great to catch up with you, Austin. Thanks for having me.