The market maker

The market maker is the automated counterparty a trade completes against. It quotes the twenty clubs TopFlight opens with and it keeps quoting those twenty wherever the table takes them.

It quotes both sides, always

On every token it quotes, the market maker holds a buying price and a selling price, in any size, at any hour. A trade completes in one step against that quote.

A token is therefore as easy to sell at three in the morning in June as it is at kick-off in October, and it can be traded from the first minute TopFlight opens. The market maker is the other side of every trade, so a trade completes the moment it is made.

How it moves prices

Every price on TopFlight is part of one total that always adds up to $1. The ledger holds that total at $1 by construction, and the market maker quotes every club against it.

Buying a club raises that club's price, and every other price gives way to make room for it. Selling a club lowers its price, and every other price rises.

The size of the move follows the size of the trade. A large order moves the price further as it fills, so it completes at a higher average price than the price it started at.

Its holding

Money is put into the market maker at the start, and that money is what stands behind every quote it makes. It also holds most of every club's tokens at the start. That holding is what lets it quote a price on a club before anyone else has traded it.

Its holding shrinks as people buy in. Every purchase moves tokens from the market maker to a holder.

Every club has the same total number of tokens and that number moves as the market does rather than sitting at a fixed figure. What tells one club from another is how many of its tokens the market maker still holds.

Its share of the daily pay

Every token of a club earns the same amount each day, whoever holds it. The market maker is counted like any other holder and the tokens it has not sold earn for it.

As people buy in, the market maker's holding shrinks and a larger share of each club's tokens sits with people earning on them.

Its fee

The market maker charges 0.5 percent on the way in and on the way out, worked out on the cheaper side of the trade, and the fee stays with it. Other market makers can quote TopFlight's clubs on their own terms and set their own fees. TopFlight's own fee, the protocol fee, is separate and sits beneath every market maker's fee. Prices and trading sets out both.