Announcing World’s First DEX Alliance Initiative

Today, the Loopring Foundation kicks off the world’s first decentralized exchange alliance initiative. We plan to serve 100 partners and empower them to be part of Loopring’s DEX ecosystem, with liquidity sharing enabled among all partners.

This initiative has two phases. The first phase is called Bootstrapping, in which Loopring will make available its own relay clusters to offer Matching-As-A-Service (MAAS). The second phase is called Superconducting, in which Loopring will provide inter-relay liquidity sharing by connecting with third-party relay clusters.

Bootstrapping

We welcome wallets, DEXs and market makers to join us first, by using the “Bootstrap” relay cluster (bootstrap.loopring.io) maintained by the foundation. Partners will be paid 20% of the matching fees (trading fees) for all orders they generate, guaranteed by the protocol in real-time. Furthermore, we will distribute all excess profit — 80% of the matching fees minus relay operational cost — twice a year to our partners based on their liquidity contribution.

For DEXs and wallets, we have open-sourced Loopr, Loopr-iOS, and the Loopring.js library. We will soon open-source H5Dex and Circulr, two new frontend solutions, for them to build their DEXs and wallet frontends/apps. We will open-source more frontend solutions later this year.

Market makers — anyone with some assets and a market-making algorithm — can also earn 20% of trading fees and half of the margins. The more liquidity they provide, the bigger the profit they make. They place orders directly to the relay cluster, bypassing any wallet or DEX.

The Loopring.js library is handy for accessing Loopring’s Bootstrap relay cluster, or market makers can access Bootstrap’s REST API directly.

Loopring Protocol and the backend relay are non-custodial. It guarantees secure trading even in the worst possible circumstance. No users’ assets are ever at risk.

Superconducting

We will provide an inter-relay liquidity sharing mechanism called “Superconducting Alliance” by connecting third-party relay clusters with the Bootstrap clusters.

DEXs will be able to broadcast their orders to more relays, thereby improving order matching efficiency. Our partners can build their own relay clusters and join the order sharing network by optimizing our open-sourced relay software. The Loopring Foundation has collaborated with Up Blockchain to develop the next generation Lightcone Relay, which we will open-source in stages.

We will distribute all profits of Loopring Bootstrap clusters to the operation teams of other relay clusters based on their order contribution. If the Superconducting Alliance becomes stable enough in the future, Loopring will stop maintaining the non-profit Bootstrap clusters or transfer them to other institutions for commercial operation.

How to List Your Tokens

Three steps are required in order to view certain trading pairs in the DEXs:

1. Register the ERC20 token in the smart contract of Loopring Protocol. This step only needs to be done once for each token issuer. The Loopring Foundation will process the application on a weekly basis, and register the qualified tokens for free. So far we have the following requirements for listing your tokens: ❶ it must conform to the ERC20 standard and have no bugs in its code; ➋ it cannot allow for arbitrary additional issuance; ❸ the code must be open-sourced and verified by etherscan.io.
2. Register the ERC20 trading pairs in the Bootstrap clusters. The Loopring Foundation will process the application on a weekly basis.
3. Configure the trading pairs in the wallet/DEX. This process is completely determined by the wallet/DEX.

We will make some adjustments to the above process depending on the actual situation later this year.

The Difference Between Our Initiative and Centralized Exchange Alliances

Our service features and benefits:

• 100% open-sourced code. The code of frontend solutions provided by Loopring Foundation is permanently open-sourced.
• 100% free service. The products and services offered by Loopring Foundation are permanently free of charge.
• 100% commission-free trading. Loopring Foundation does not take part in profits with alliance members. 100% of transaction profits belong to our partners.
• Focusing on technology and products. Loopring is dedicated to providing the best open-sourced front-end solutions for ecosystem partners. We empower our partners to explore the ultimate decentralized exchange experience so that we can make transactions easier, safer and faster.

Here are some essential differences between Loopring’s initiative and centralized exchange alliances based on the concept of “trade-as-mining”.

• Loopring Protocol is a non-custodial DEX matching technology. Loopring orders can be broadcast to any number of relay clusters without any trust. No partners’ assets are at risk. Meanwhile, the centralized exchange alliance is very much custodial. Once the exchange is hacked, all participants are likely to take the joint and several liabilities.
• Loopring Foundation is a non-profit organization. We will not subsidize our partners for marketing gimmicks. However, we will maintain our neutrality and provide the best frontend solutions and open-sourced code for our ecosystem partners.
• Loopring is a non-exclusive open ecosystem. You are free to use Loopring Protocol without joining our alliance. Meanwhile, our partners can stop using the official Loopring Bootstrap clusters and switch to their own clusters or any other third-party matching services whenever they like. On the other hand, participants of centralized exchange alliances are deeply bound to the backend of the exchange. Therefore, the exchange has partnered over a barrel in terms of both operation and rules. As a result, those partners do not have a say in any decisions. After the commercial value of their traffic has been exhausted and their users have been directed towards the backend of centralized exchanges, they will be abandoned by the alliance.

How to Apply

Please prepare your team description and other necessary material and send them to foundation@loopring.org. We will start reviewing applications on August 1st.

Members of our alliance can lock their LRC tokens to acquire higher technical and operational priorities. The more LRC locked, the higher the membership level. We will release more details about LRC locking at a later date.

For more up-to-date information, join us on social media:
⭑ Twitter: twitter.com/loopringorg
⭑ Reddit: reddit.com/r/loopringorg
⭑ Telegram: t.me/loopring_en
⭑ Telegram: t.me/loopringfans (Chinese)
⭑ StackOverflow: stackoverflow.com/c/loopring
⭑ Kakao: open.kakao.com/o/gJbSZdF (Korean)