Market Making Overview

How to market make on Vela Exchange — features, mechanics, and getting started

Vela is purpose-built for professional market makers. The engine exposes features that most DEXes require you to build workarounds for: concurrent order dispatch, capital-efficient quoting, private feeds, and maker rebates.

MM-Specific Features

Feature	Description
Credit system	Quote up to 1× your deposited amount across all open orders
HFT nonces	20 concurrent in-flight orders with no head-of-line blocking
Client order IDs	Assign your own IDs at placement; cancel by your ID without round-trips
Auto-cancel	Engine clears room for new orders on credit ratio breach
Maker rebate	−1 bps on every resting fill, credited in USDC
Private L3 feeds	Authenticated WebSocket feed for your fills, order updates, and balance changes

Getting Started

1. Connect your wallet — any Ethereum-compatible wallet that supports personal_sign works. See Connect Wallet.

2. Deposit collateral — ETH and USDC are settled on-chain. Minimum deposit: there is no enforced minimum, but $1,000+ USDC gives meaningful headroom. See Deposit Funds.

3. Read the API guide — the Market Maker API Guide covers authentication, nonce management, order placement, and a complete Python market maker implementation.

4. Subscribe to your private feed — connect to the WebSocket and authenticate to receive real-time fills and order updates. See WebSocket Feeds.

Capital Efficiency

The credit system lets you quote beyond your deposited amount — up to 1:1. A $10,000 USDC deposit supports$10,000 of live bid + ask notional across all markets simultaneously. Orders at multiple price levels across multiple markets all count toward the same cap.

When a new order would exceed the cap, the engine auto-cancels your oldest open orders one at a time until there is room. This fires atomically within the same engine tick — your new order always lands.

See Credit System for the math.

Fee Structure

Role	Fee
Maker (resting order)	−1 bps (rebate)
Taker (aggressive order)	+5 bps

Maker rebates are applied per fill and credited directly to your USDC balance. A two-sided market maker quoting competitive spreads should accumulate rebates on every fill.

See Fee Framework for calculation details.

HFT Nonces

Instead of a strict sequential nonce, Vela maintains a rolling window of your 20 most recent nonces. You can dispatch 20 orders simultaneously with no blocking. See HFT Nonce Scheme.

Private L3 Feed

Your order flow is not visible on the public feed. Connect to wss://vela-engine.fly.dev/ws, authenticate with your wallet signature, and subscribe to account:{your_address} to receive:

• fill — your fills, with fee breakdown
• order_update — order status changes including auto-cancellations
• balance_update — USDC balance and credit utilization changes

See WebSocket Feeds.

MM Dashboard

The dashboard at /mm surfaces credit utilization, open orders, P&L, and per-market summary in one view. It reads from your private feed in real time. See MM Dashboard.

Institutional Tiers

Enhanced rebates, higher credit limits, and dedicated support are available. Contact [e-mail].