Market Makers
Learn about how market makers operate within Bolt Liquidity and how to participate.
Bolt Liquidity decouples price discovery from on-chain liquidity. Outposts settle trades at best-available price based on our deterministic oracle prices sourced from centralized exchanges, while Market Makers (Order Settlers) hedge on centralized venues and replenish the Outposts’ single-sided pools, earning fees in the process.
Core Role of Market Makers
Market Makers sit at the intersection of Bolt Liquidity's Outposts and the single-sided pools deployed to each chain, and another off-chain source of funds. Their responsibilities include:
Order Monitoring
Continuously scan Outposts for new swap orders submitted by users to hedge on their preferred funding source (typically a CEX).
Hedging & Neutrality
When a user initiates a swap, the Market Maker immediately executes an offsetting hedge on an external CEX (or other deep liquidity venue).
This allows the MM to remain asset-neutral, avoiding speculative exposure to volatile crypto assets and allowing them to replenish pools on the Outposts.
Liquidity Rebalancing
Once the hedge is secured, MMs return the corresponding assets to the on-chain pool.
This rebalancing ensures Bolt’s Outposts are continuously liquid and aligned with current market depth.
Settlement
The Outpost finalizes the trade automatically, delivering assets to the user with zero slippage and minimal price impact via the smart contract.
The Market Maker collects execution and liquidity fees for performing this service.
Components of the Market Maker Workflow
Pricing: Market Makers leverage Bolt’s Oracle and Proof-of-Price-Efficiency (“PoPE”) system to guarantee that on-chain trades reference the most efficient global market price.
Execution: Hedging takes place off-chain (CEXs, deep liquidity venues) for speed and efficiency, while settlement occurs on-chain via Outposts.
Risk Management: Because all trades are hedged in real time, MMs face minimal inventory risk. Exposure is temporary and neutralized almost instantly.
Rebalancing Mechanism: If pool liquidity is becoming low due to repeated order flow in one direction, MMs top up the drained asset from their external hedge. This maintains healthy pool composition and prevents exhaustion of liquidity.
Benefits for Market Makers
Participating in Bolt offers a uniquely attractive profile compared to traditional AMM or order-book systems:
Asset-Neutral Market Making
MMs do not need to speculate on asset direction. Hedging ensures neutrality, making it closer to a high-frequency trading model rather than an LP position subject to impermanent loss.
Fee Revenue
MMs earn:
Swap fees from user trades.
Liquidity provision fees from maintaining and replenishing pool liquidity.
This creates multiple revenue streams with relatively low directional risk.
Guaranteed Flow Access
Since every trade must pass through an Outpost, MMs have access to all order flow without having to monitor hundreds of pools and asset pairs across venues.
Reduced Competition vs. Traditional AMMs
No “race-to-the-bottom” LP competition across dozens of pools. Bolt consolidates liquidity into single-sided pools, which MMs rebalance efficiently.
Cross-Chain Reach
MMs can service trades across multiple ecosystems (EVM, SVM, Sui, Cosmos, etc.) from a single unified infrastructure.
Bolt’s modular Outpost design ensures new chain deployments directly expand MM opportunities without new integrations.
Capital Efficiency
Pools only require single-sided deposits (no 50/50 pairing).
MMs can optimize capital usage and avoid impermanent loss entirely, unlike AMMs.
Since price is deterministic based on Bolt’s oracle, rather than based on pool depth and balance, liquidity can be used more efficiently allowing MMs / LPs to turnover their liquidity more often generating higher ROI with less idle capital.
Strategic Value of the Market Maker
For Market Makers: Bolt provides a steady flow of trades, diversified fee revenue, and a capital-efficient, low-risk structure that resembles professional market making on CEXs — but with the additional upside of capturing DeFi volume as well.
For Bolt as a protocol: Market Makers guarantee that Bolt’s liquidity remains deep, prices track global markets, and users always settle at zero slippage.
Become a Market Maker
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