Market makers are the grease that keeps financial wheels turning. In crypto, they’ve often been the grit. For more than a decade, firms paid to provide liquidity in digital tokens have faced accusations of inflating volumes, propping up prices and engineering pump-and-dump schemes. Token projects, desperate for liquidity, signed opaque deals with trading firms whose incentives weren’t always aligned with their own. The result has been a business that looks less like financial plumbing and more like a Wild West shoot-out.