Auros

Excited to welcome Auros to the #W3H community. 🤝 As Hong Kong strengthens its role as a mature digital asset hub, reliable liquidity and institutional infrastructure are key. Auros is a leading global liquidity provider and market maker with over $1.3 trillion in trading volume year-to-date across 40+ venues. 💱 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐭 𝐀𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐬: 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘒𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵. 𝘞𝘦’𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭-𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 — 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘰𝘯. Auros contributes through both capital and expertise. Their Ventures arm has backed 60+ early-stage companies (mostly pre-seed and seed), and they look forward to sharing liquidity and market structure insights with members through events and collaboration. Hong Kong’s regulatory clarity is attracting serious capital and builders. The next phase is translating that into deeper liquidity and broader institutional adoption. #W3H #Web3 #DigitalAssets #HongKong #Liquidity #InstitutionalAdoption

For much of the past decade, stablecoins were primarily viewed as a way to park capital between trades - not core financial infrastructure. That has changed. They now move through cross-border payments, treasury management, collateral operations, and settlement, with the global market having approached $300 billion in circulation by the end of 2025. But that growth is exposing a structural problem: every new stablecoin, blockchain, and settlement network is another destination for capital. Liquidity keeps growing in aggregate, yet accessing it efficiently is getting harder. Displayed liquidity is not the same as executable liquidity - especially when volatility hits. From our perspective as a market maker operating across CeFi and DeFi, this is where the next phase will be decided. We provide liquidity for 10+ major stablecoins across 115+ CEXs and DEXs and we think the firms best positioned to support this growth won't be the largest issuers, but those capable of sourcing, aggregating, and routing liquidity across an increasingly fragmented ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/gzNHddiH

Ezra Wong and Leah Yoo from our BD team will be attending WebX in Tokyo. If you're seeking trading counterparties, liquidity providers, or exploring potential collaboration opportunities with Auros, feel free to reach out and connect.

The biggest DeFi security incidents lately haven't been code exploits. They've been governance failures, compromised infrastructure, and operational blind spots. For years, DeFi security meant one thing: smart contract audits. But as the industry has matured, so has the attack surface - today's most consequential incidents increasingly stem not from flawed code, but from governance failures, compromised infrastructure, and operational blind spots. In our latest piece, we break down what this shift means for protocols competing for long-term liquidity. Drawing on Auros' experience deploying capital across multiple venues, chains, and protocols simultaneously, we look at: → Why the distinction between "protocol risk" and "operational risk" is increasingly blurred → What market makers actually evaluate before committing capital → Why governance, infrastructure dependencies, and incident response are now core to liquidity decisions "When we assess a protocol's liquidity needs, we're really assessing everything that could compromise that liquidity: how upgrades and upgrade keys are managed, how vulnerable the protocol is to bridge or oracle dependencies, and how operationally resilient it is when something breaks. Protocols that want deep, reliable liquidity must first make themselves deeply trusted and reliable to liquidity providers." - William Meng, Senior DeFi Trader, Auros Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/gYCi66GP

Most projects find out how their market maker actually operates after they've signed. By then, switching is expensive. For Report 3 of the Auros × The Block Liquidity Mastery Series, we spoke with executives at Bybit, Kraken, Keyrock, Immutable, LMAX Group, and others. The same five criteria kept coming up and the last two are the ones teams consistently underweight going in. 1. Reputation gets assessed on brand name when it should be assessed on behaviour under stress. Ask for references you didn't receive from the firm itself. Ask specifically what happened when markets turned. 2. Technical capability and capital strength have to be read together. A firm with strong infrastructure but a thin balance sheet will pull liquidity when conditions deteriorate - which is exactly when you need the opposite. 3. Specialisation is underrated. As Giancarlo Cudrig at Immutable put it: "There are meaningfully better MMs depending on size, stage, and vertical. A one-size-fits-all approach is inefficient and often value-destructive." The firm that's excellent for a large liquid token may be the wrong fit for an early-stage launch. 4. Operational discipline is harder to see in a pitch. Ask for sample reports. Ask how they handle issues they didn't cause. Reactive problem-solving and disciplined operations are not the same thing. 5. Economic alignment is the one most teams look at last. Low fees can reflect low commitment. What matters is whether both sides stay exposed to the same conditions throughout the contract - and whether the structure adapts when things change. The full report has a due diligence checklist, RFP template, and contract negotiation guidance.

The fact that RWA tokenisation and agentic commerce are now part of HK's Five-Year Plan conversation says a lot about where the market is heading. Proud to have Jason Atkins representing Auros as part of the delegation.

The most expensive liquidity mistake we see projects make isn't hiring the wrong market maker. It's hiring the right one too late. We've had this conversation more times than we'd like to count: a project comes to us 7–10 days before their TGE. Exchange confirmed, community warmed up, announcement ready. They just need someone to "handle the liquidity side." Here's why that timeline doesn't work. A proper market maker setup requires 3-4 weeks at minimum before a listing. Not because of paperwork. Because of the actual operational work: 1/ Inventory building. We need to accumulate a position in your token before listing ideally at a pre-agreed price so we can provide two-sided quotes from day one. This takes time and coordination. 2/ Parameter calibration. Spread targets, depth targets, rebalancing thresholds - these need to be set based on your token's specific circulating supply, vesting schedule, and expected volatility. Copying parameters from another project is how you get day-14 liquidity cliffs. For tier-1 listings, the real runway is closer to 8–12 weeks. 3/ Integration testing. Especially for on-chain venues. You don't want to discover a problem with your liquidity setup during a live listing. The projects with the smoothest launches treat liquidity as part of the product - not a vendor plugged in at the end. If your TGE is in the next 90 days, now is the right time to have this conversation. Not the week before.

Good week in New York for ETHConf. Co-hosted Top of the Block with Optimum, BitMine, 1kx, and Blockdaemon. The RWA conversation has shifted - less theoretical, more "when and how." Tokenized equities, stablecoin settlement, on-chain credit are all moving toward actual execution. That means the liquidity layer is next. Good place for us to be.

Tomorrow in NYC we're hosting Top of the Block, a special pre-@ethconf event cohosted with 1kx, BitMine Immersion Technologies, Auros, and Blockdaemon. Financial institutions, licensed exchanges, DATs, hedge funds, market makers, node operators - the institutions powering the onchain economy all know that networking optimization is foundational to expanding it. Excited to bring them together for a great night in the city!

Does professional market making measurably improve token performance? That question drives Report 2 of The Block × Auros Liquidity Mastery Series and we now have a statistically rigorous answer. The research applies T-test analysis across 100+ tokens, examining three distinct spread types: quoted, effective, and realised. Each captures a different dimension of market quality. Using all three rather than relying on a single metric is what separates meaningful benchmarking from surface level comparison. Two findings stand out: → Volatility reduction is real, but context dependent. Professional liquidity provision measurably reduces volatility - though the magnitude varies by sector and geography. The right benchmark depends on which cohort you're actually comparing against. → Impact evolves across the token lifecycle. What a healthy order book looks like 30 days post-TGE is meaningfully different from 12 months in. Performance expectations need to reflect where a token is in its maturity curve. The headline conclusion, T-tested across 100+ tokens: professional liquidity provision measurably improves token performance and market health. Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/guZwVCjv