Key takeaways

  • Binance showed $38.4M of $ETH depth within 1% of the price. Three Uniswap v3 ETH/USDC pools together showed $4.5M, about 8.5x less. (TDMM measurement, 30 Sep 2026.)

  • A $1M ETH trade moved Binance by 2.7 bps and the largest Uniswap v3 pool by 63.2 bps before fees, about 23x more. At $100k the all-in cost was almost the same, 10.2 vs 11.3 bps.

  • DEX spot volume hit a record 24.2% of CEX spot volume in July 2026 ($176B vs $727B, CoinDesk Data). CEX still carries four times more spot volume.

  • A full-range pool needs about 100x the capital of an order book for the same 2% depth. A passive pool at new-token volatility (166%) loses about 34.4% a year to arbitrage before fees.

  • Most tokens that trade on both need both, run as one book with one reference price.

 

CEX market making is posting buy and sell limit orders on an exchange order book from one reference price. The market maker earns the spread and maker rebates and carries inventory risk and adverse selection.

DEX market making is supplying and managing liquidity in pools, price ranges, on-chain order books or proprietary AMMs. The market maker earns pool fees and pays arbitrageurs, and carries MEV, contract and stale-range risk.

Depth. On ETH, the spot books on Binance, Kraken, OKX and Coinbase were 2.7 to 8.5x as deep within 1% as three Uniswap v3 pools combined. On $LINK the gap narrowed to 1.7 to 4.0x, because DEX liquidity is split across several thin pools.

Bar chart of two-sided ETH depth within 1% of the price: Hyperliquid perpetual $125.4M, Binance $38.4M, Kraken $27.2M, OKX $18.5M, Coinbase $12.2M, three Uniswap v3 pools $4.5M.

Capital. $10,000 of depth a side within 2% takes about $20,000 of resting orders, $2.01M in a full-range pool, or about $98,000 in a range of plus or minus 10% that someone keeps on the price.

Arbitrage. Loss-versus-rebalancing is volatility squared over eight a year: 2.5% at 45% volatility, 34.4% at 166%. A 0.3% pool needs about 31.5% of its value to trade every day to break even at 166%.

Rules. Binance's March 2026 guidelines ask issuers to disclose their market maker's identity and terms and ban profit-sharing and guaranteed-return deals. A DEX has no listing team, so the standard comes from your own contract.

Decision matrix matching token stages to CEX and DEX market making needs.

Which one?

  • One DEX pool, no listing planned: managed DEX liquidity is enough

  • Several pools or chains: DEX market making across pools

  • First CEX listing onward: CEX and DEX together, on one price

TDMM runs CEX and DEX market making as one service across 100+ integrations and 200+ markets, active since 2015, with spread, depth and uptime reported for each venue. We publish this, so read it with that in mind. No price or volume promises.

Full study, method and sources: tdmm.io/insights/blog/cex-vs-dex-market-making

#MarketMaking #CEX #DEX #CryptoLiquidity #DeFi

Not investment, legal or tax advice. TDMM provides the services discussed. Measurements are single-moment snapshots of two tokens (ETH, LINK) on 30 Sep 2026 and exclude Uniswap v4, other DEXs and RFQ liquidity; model figures rest on stated assumptions. Crypto is volatile and you can lose your entire position.