Where would we be without liquidity? Call it the lifeblood of crypto; call it the oil that greases the markets; or just call it “money” if you prefer, cos that’s what it essentially is – well-funded firms putting serious amounts of money into liquidity pools and order books to ensure swaps can be efficiently executed.
While you probably don’t stop to thank them every time you execute a trade with zero slippage, it is thanks to LPs that this is all possible. From the largest centralized exchanges to the smallest DEXs, liquidity is the force that connects it all, making the crypto ecosystem work as one. The same liquidity that allows you to trade at the quoted price is also instrumental in ensuring price consistency across the board.
Any time a whale makes a large buy on an exchange, the asset’s latest price is rapidly reflected across thousands of other trading platforms, and it’s all thanks to liquidity. LPs, often operating as market makers, are the engine that facilitates this, ensuring that the price you’re quoted is the price you pay. If you’ve traded crypto this year, there’s a good chance your order was executed by one of the following firms.
But before we list them, let’s take a moment to clarify the difference between market makers and liquidity providers – because many companies perform both roles. But make no mistake, there is a difference.
Liquidity Provisioning vs. Market Making: What’s the Difference?
While the terms “market making” and “liquidity provisioning” are often used interchangeably, they describe distinct approaches to supplying liquidity. In short, market making is an active, dynamic process, while LP’ing is more passive.
Market makers continuously post bids and asks around the current market price to absorb incoming orders on order book exchanges – these are mostly CEXs, but an increasing number of DEXs also now use this model. Market makers profit primarily from capturing the bid-ask spread. This should normally be very tight, but because cryptos are volatile, it can occasionally deviate – and the asset’s price can move greatly from the point at which the market maker began supplying liquidity.
To address this and ensure that they don’t lose significant capital should the market move in the wrong direction, market makers deploy sophisticated algorithms to manage inventory risk. This allows them to optimize processes such as hedging positions and adjusting pricing in real time – something that’s particularly critical during volatile periods. Market making is big brain stuff, which is why it’s only undertaken by professional firms with the right tech and team.
Liquidity provisioning, in contrast, is much more passive and commitment-based. LPs commit capital to order books and pools, earning fixed swap fees rather than actively trading the spread. In DeFi, this typically manifests as automated market maker (AMM) pools, where LPs hope that any impermanent loss – from price movements in the underlying tokens – is offset by trading fees.
Market makers make market orders; LPs supply depth.
In practice, the lines blur since many leading firms excel at both, blending active algorithmic quoting on exchanges with passive depth for token projects on DEXs and AMMs. The following businesses fall into this bracket, and this year have played an outsized role in supplying both CEX and DEX liquidity, delivering tighter spreads and greater reliability across the board.
The Best Liquidity Providers in 2025
The companies listed below are among the best in the biz. While some of their names will be familiar to you, others may be unknown. Make no mistake, though, they’ve still been putting a shift in: if they haven’t been shouting about it, it’s cos they’re not targeting retail – their clients are exchanges, protocols, and token issuers. And these entities are fully aware of the value they add in delivering crypto liquidity on tap.
DWF Labs
DWF Labs remains a dominant crypto liquidity provider and is one of the busiest market makers in the industry. While it has expanded into a full-stack Web3 business, offering advisory, OTC services, and venture capital investment, liquidity provision remains its bread and butter.
DWF Labs boasts an immense network of over 700 partners and is integrated with over 60 CEX and DEX venues, meaning its liquidity is deployed ecosystem-wide. They cater to everything from micro-caps and memecoins to established blue chips, efficiently maintaining tight bid-ask spreads even for tokens in their earliest stages. Many partner projects receive direct investment from DWF’s VC arm, so it’s natural that the firm should oversee token launches and long-term liquidity management on their behalf.
Wintermute
A true veteran of the space, Wintermute has been an indispensable force since the earliest days of DeFi. Its reliability and sheer scale mean it remains a big hitter. With lifetime trading volume exceeding $600 billion, Wintermute operates silently across more than 50 centralized and decentralized exchanges, including giants such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Uniswap. The firm’s liquidity accounts for $15B in daily volume.
Wintermute’s proprietary algorithms are highly regarded for their ability to optimize liquidity and maintain market flow, even during turbulent market conditions. While much of its volume now takes place on CEXs, Wintermute was also an early provider of on-chain liquidity, supporting DEXs and sophisticated products such as dYdX perpetual futures markets.
Cumberland
A division of DRW Trading, Cumberland brings an institutional level of maturity and regulatory rigor to the crypto market. Since its 2014 entry, it’s become the preferred choice for major institutional players. Cumberland primarily caters to hedge funds, exchanges, and corporate treasuries, offering turnkey solutions for high-volume trades without disrupting market stability.
Its core expertise lies in Over-the-Counter (OTC) trades and large-block transactions, where it guarantees execution size and price certainty for large trading firms. Known for its steady, unflappable approach, Cumberland’s robust risk management practices ensure consistent performance and reliability while ticking all the right regulatory boxes for institutional adoption. With the promise of “deep liquidity pools and better prices,” Cumberland certainly talks their language.
Amber Group
Amber Group is a global powerhouse that straddles both CeFi and DeFi, leveraging its intellectual heft and advanced algorithms to deliver deep liquidity. The firm executes an impressive $5 billion in daily volume across more than 200 tokens, accounting for over 3% of total market turnover. Like DWF Labs, Amber Group operates as a full-stack Web3 business, providing crucial advisory services for token issuance and secondary market lifecycle management, guiding projects through the critical launch phase.
Amber is particularly proud of its uptime, which it believes gives the company a competitive edge. It boasts an uptime of more than 95%, to keep tokens and exchanges ticking over, no matter how high the volatility or busy the block space. Or as Amber Group puts it, “Our battle-tested infrastructure stack guarantees seamless operations with minimal downtime, ensuring uninterrupted access to liquidity and trading opportunities.” That’s why they’re in demand.
GSR
Hailing from London, GSR is a veteran with over a decade of experience, plugged into over 60 exchanges globally, and providing consistent liquidity through all market cycles. One of the company’s greatest strengths is its commitment to transparency, providing clients with detailed daily reports that include Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and granular data on performance and slippage.
GSR works tirelessly to increase order book depth and ensure fair price discovery with reasonable bid-ask spreads – which is everything you’d want from a market maker and liquidity provider. While not as large as some of the liquidity providers profiled here, GSR is still a very capable operator.
Vortex
As an up-and-coming player, Vortex has quickly earned a high reputation for its personalized approach and willingness to explore emerging markets and tokens. Much more “degen friendly” than some of the more institutional-focused firms on this list, Vortex has become a firm favorite with token projects that are just getting started and need help to go from zero to one – which calls for liquidity.
The Vortex team is ahead of the curve in identifying new technologies and liquidity mechanisms, and is often one of the first professional LPs to test the latest protocols where its clients are deploying tokens. If you’re designing a novel token or launching on a new L2, Vortex is the team you talk to.
Liquidity is King
The liquidity providers we’ve just analyzed aren’t in the business of inflating or deflating token prices: they’re here to provide the consistent liquidity necessary for price discovery. On the surface, their work consists of adding market depth and tightening spreads, but the ripple effects extend much wider. Because when the liquidity is in place, everything works better: new tokens can launch, established tokens can grind higher, and viral tokens can make the step up from DEX to CEX.
For any serious project launching a token, partnering with a leading liquidity provider is not just advisable – it’s essential.
Source: https://zycrypto.com/the-best-liquidity-providers-of-cryptocurrencies-in-2025/
