Liquidity Renting Is Dead: Why Protocol Sovereignty Will Define Ethereum’s Future

Obol will focus on building our Protocol Owned Liquidity in 2026. As part of this move, we are making a strategic liquidity consolidation to focus on a small number of leading venues.

How We Got Here and Why the Liquidity Renting Era Is Over 

Obol will prioritize our Protocol Owned Liquidity to establish permissionless sovereignty on Ethereum in 2026. We believe that the token industry’s liquidity renting model is broken and it’s time for change. 

During crypto’s early era, CEXs acted as essential hubs for capital formation. They offered token issuers visibility and distribution, while traders got easy access to the first wave of Internet-native assets in one place. This is why the top CEXs became some of the industry’s most successful businesses. 

Market makers were also key in enabling capital formation because they provided liquidity depth on CEXs. While token issuers can easily provide their own token, most of them are short on a quote asset such as USDT. Market makers provide sell side liquidity and aim to profit from capturing the spread. 

To access these services, token issuers typically pay a listing fee to the CEX and loan 1-5% of their inventory to the market maker. This means they effectively rent the trading venue and liquidity. For high-profile listings, token issuers can expect to shell out millions of dollars. In addition to the cost, this system lacks transparency. 

The pay-to-play model defied crypto’s permissionless nature because gatekeepers control how capital forms, but it served many projects early on. Today, this model fails most projects. 

The Case for Building Protocol Owned Liquidity 

Ethereum was the first network to offer a change to the status quo with the formation of onchain markets. Innovators like Uniswap built on Ethereum’s permissionlessness and censorship resistance and allowed capital to form free from intermediaries onchain. Over time, the onchain landscape has evolved and the rent-seekers are becoming obsolete. 

Today, token issuers can go to a DEX and permissionlessly seed their own liquidity instead of shelling out rental costs to external parties. Increasingly, teams are building Protocol Owned Liquidity because they see that the old model is broken. 

The past few years have shone a light on the shortcomings of pay-to-play. Many highly anticipated projects opted to trade their sovereignty for visibility at TGE assuming it would buy them supporters. In return, they got severe drawdowns and disillusioned communities. 

Obol Doubles Down on Protocol Owned Liquidity in 2026 

For our part, Obol has gotten caught up in this old system in the past. In recognition of our belief in Ethereum’s onchain markets, we are making a commitment to focus on building Protocol Owned Liquidity for OBOL moving forward. 

In doing so, we aim to improve onchain liquidity depth, market efficiency, and price execution. Establishing liquidity depth with Protocol Owned Liquidity offers a clear path to creating a healthier token life cycle. 

While there are risks associated with Protocol Owned Liquidity such as impermanent loss, Obol will focus on maintaining healthy reserves and will continue to keep our onchain liquidity to a small number of Uniswap pools on Ethereum. We will also continue using Arrakis’s industry-leading liquidity management infrastructure.

As part of our revised strategy for 2026, we recently made a strategic consolidation to increase liquidity on our deepest CEX and DEX markets. This move involved halting trading on Bitget to reduce fragmentation and deepen liquidity on other markets. 

Major CEXs provide a valuable service and OBOL will continue to trade on a select number of leading venues. With that said, we believe that the future will be owned by token issuers that place permissionless liquidity at the center of their strategy. 

As we’ve watched the old system fail token issuers, Ethereum’s onchain landscape has continued to improve. In 2026, it’s time for token issuers to own their liquidity and bring it onchain too.