Market making
The resting side of an order book is credited rather than charged. What the rebate pays, where the spread income comes from, what the venue's structure gives a quoter, and what it costs when only one leg fills.
On an order book there are two roles in every trade, and only one of them pays. The maker is whoever placed the order that was sitting there waiting. The taker is whoever came along and crossed it. The taker buys immediacy. The maker names a price, waits, and is paid for having waited.
Read this first
Acepyr is pre-mainnet. The $ACEPYR that exists today is a testnet token, a symbolic point system. It carries no economic value, no USDC claim, and no revenue share. It cannot be bought and may never have any value. For anything money-related, How Acepyr's economics work is the single source of truth.
This page assumes you know how to place an order. Trading the order book covers that.
Looking for how to quote well?
This page is the mechanics. The market maker's playbook is the practice: where to price, how to size, what to do when one leg fills alone, and when to step away.
The rebate
A resting order that gets filled is credited $ACEPYR, not charged it. The credit is sized the same way the fee is: largest where the market is most uncertain, shrinking toward both ends of the price range.
| Fill price | The crossing side pays | The resting side is credited |
|---|---|---|
| $0.50 | 0.80% | 0.50% |
| $0.25 or $0.75 | 0.60% | 0.38% |
| $0.10 or $0.90 | 0.29% | 0.18% |
| $0.05 or $0.95 | 0.15% | 0.10% |
| $0.01 or $0.99 | 0.03% | 0.02% |
The gap between the two columns is what the platform keeps. At even money that is 0.30% of the trade, and it narrows along with everything else toward the tails.
Why the shape. Quoting a market that could go either way is the hard case: the price moves most, the inventory risk is highest, and a quoter is most likely to be picked off. That is exactly where the credit is largest. Quoting a market that has effectively already decided is easy, and the credit there is close to nothing, because close to nothing is what it is worth.
A market can only rebate what it has collected
The credit is funded out of the fees that market's own crossing traders have already paid. A market tracks what it has taken in against what it has paid back out, and a rebate is capped at the difference. A market can never pay out more than it took in, which means a quiet market with no crossing flow has nothing to pay a quoter with, however tight the quotes are.
The rebate is paid on a fill against the order book. A trade against a curve market has no resting side to pay, so there is nothing to credit there.
This schedule can change
Both columns are the schedule in force now, not a commitment. They are set deliberately and can be moved. Check this page rather than a number you wrote down, and do not build a strategy that only works at one exact rate.
The pair
The second source of income has nothing to do with fees. It comes from the fact that a YES share and a NO share on the same market are together worth exactly $1.00, whichever way the market goes.
Rest a buy on both sides
Say a buy of YES at $0.48 and a buy of NO at $0.48.
If both fill, you hold a complete pair
It cost you $0.96.
A complete pair redeems for $1.00
One side pays $1.00 and the other pays $0.00, and it does not matter which. The four cents are yours.
That four cents is the spread, and it is the older and larger of the two income sources. The rebate sits on top of it, credited on each leg as it fills.
What the venue's structure gives a quoter
These are properties of how the book is built, not incentives that can be switched off.
| Property | What it means when you're the one resting |
|---|---|
| Your price is the price | When your resting order is part of a trade that creates a new pair of shares, it executes at exactly the price you quoted. The crossing side pays the complement, and any price improvement goes to them. You are never filled better than you asked, and never worse. |
| You don't need shares to sell | A buy of YES and a buy of NO crossing each other creates a brand-new pair out of nothing but the dollar the two of them put up. Quoting both sides does not require holding inventory first. |
| The dollar is whole | Every share on the book was created backed by a full dollar, so the market's reserve always covers its outstanding pairs. A winning share redeems for $1.00 and is never scaled down to fit what happens to be left, which is not true on a curve market. |
| Re-quoting is free | Cancelling costs nothing and is not rate limited. Placing is, at sixty orders a minute, which is the real ceiling on how fast a book can be re-quoted. |
| New books open two-sided | A newly listed order-book market opens with a two-sided ladder already resting around the middle, so there is something to trade against from the first minute rather than an empty page. |
| An empty book is yours to price | Where nothing is resting, there is no mid to work around and the first quote sets one. A thin book is a worse place to be filled and a better place to set the price. |
The Provide Liquidity ladder
Quoting a market by hand, one order at a time, is slow. The order menu on a market page carries a Provide Liquidity option that places a two-sided ladder in one action:
| You choose | Range |
|---|---|
| A budget | The $ACEPYR the whole ladder may lock |
| How far off the mid to start | 1 to 25 cents |
| How many price levels to stack | 1 to 5 |
| How long the quotes stay up | A choice from the market's expiry menu: minutes on an hour-long market, up to 24 hours on a long one |
The ladder is placed as ordinary resting buy orders on both sides. Nothing about them is special: they queue, fill, expire and cancel exactly like orders you place one by one, and they are credited the same rebate. The budget is split evenly by $ACEPYR across every order, so away from even money the cheaper side holds more shares than the dearer one.
What it costs to quote
One leg filling is the ordinary case, not the unlucky one
If only one of your two legs fills, you do not hold a matched pair. You hold a directional position, exposed to the outcome, at the price you quoted. On a thin book that is common rather than rare, and it is the reason quoting both sides is not a market-neutral position. The pair income exists only when the pair completes.
The rest of the cost is plainer:
- Your budget is locked while the quotes rest. A resting buy escrows its price times its size plus 5% headroom, and that $ACEPYR is unavailable until the order fills, expires or is cancelled.
- Quoting is done by hand. The Terms of Service prohibit bots, scripts and automated access, so the trade panel and the ladder tool are the way to quote. There is no trading API, no API key and no programmatic order entry.
- There is no streaming depth feed. The ladder is read by polling a snapshot every few seconds. You will not see a book change the instant it changes.
- There is no market maker programme. No tier, no allowlist, no designated quoter status, no token issuance and no tournament credit for quoting. The rebate and the spread are the whole of it.
- Nothing obliges you to quote, and nothing obliges anyone to trade with you. There is no uptime requirement, no minimum spread and no penalty for pulling your quotes. The other side of that is no assurance of flow.
FAQ
Related
- Trading the order book — orders, escrow, queue position and the merged ladder
- Overview — how a market works, and the two engines behind it
- How Acepyr's economics work — the single source of truth on anything money-related
Questions
Email auriza@acepyr.com.