A taker is an entity that places an order that is immediately matched with an order already on the book. A maker is an entity that places an order that is not immediately matched with an order already on the book.

In a traditional exchange, when you place an order to buy or sell at a certain price, that order is called a limit order. Your trade will only happen if someone else places an order at the same price as yours.

If no one has placed an order at that price, your order will just sit on the books until someone else does. This system works well enough when there’s not too much trading going on, but it can cause problems during times of high volume.

During periods of high volume, there may not be any orders on the books at the price you want to trade at. In this case, you have to place what’s called a market order.

With a market order, you don’t care what price you get, you just want to buy or sell right away. The problem with market orders is that they can often lead to slippage, which is when you get a worse price than you were expecting.

To avoid this problem, some exchanges have implemented a system where market orders are divided into two types: taker orders and maker orders.

Taker orders are filled immediately, regardless of price. This means that if there’s only one order on the books at the price you want to trade at, you’ll still get that trade executed.

However, because taker orders always get filled immediately, they also always incurr a fee.

Maker orders are not filled immediately. This means that if there’s only one order on the books at the price you want to trade at, your order will sit on the books until someone else comes along and places an order at that same price.

Because maker orders don’t always get filled immediately, they often don’t incurr a fee.

The advantage of this system is that it encourages people to place limit orders instead of market orders. Limit orders are good for the exchange because they add liquidity to the market.

Market orders are bad for the exchange because they often result in slippage.

The disadvantage of this system is that it can be confusing for new users. When you place an order on most exchanges, you expect it to be filled immediately.

With maker-taker exchanges, your order may or may not be filled immediately, and you may or may not be charged a fee depending on whether or not your order gets filled immediately.