Loopring Bi-Weekly Update — 09/01/2018

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Loopring Protocol

7 min readSep 2, 2018

We’ve made very strong progress on our open-source iOS app, Loopr-iOS, as well as protocol 2.0. Read on for more details.

Protocol

The smart contracts of protocol 2.0 are about 90% complete in terms of development and core functionalities.

The most essential components of our new token economic model (fee model) is nearing completion, and only a small part remains unimplemented.
Now, in one Loopring settlement transaction, multiple orders from the same address are allowed.
We also implemented the feature to enable the purchased token (tokenB) to be transferred to another address other than the order’s owning address.

We have also been improving our test cases. With the simulation of various scenarios in the transaction as well as a variety of failure conditions, the test coverage is now close to 100%.

Besides that, we split the protocol simulation JavaScript code from the protocol2 codebase into a separate project — protocol2-js. Using this new codebase will make the subsequent development of a protocol simulator tool more convenient.

It is very likely that we will begin deploying 2.0 to Ethereum for internal testing in October and get ready for independent security audits.

DEX Backend

Relay 1.0

We solved issues that caused incorrect nonce for new addresses and fixed a bug that made some user’s transaction data missing. We also added a new feature to allow users to add any ERC20 tokens into their asset list.

Our engineers have added multiple APIs for the RingTracker tool. These APIs will provide Loopring Protocol data querying and browsing functionalities. As of now, these APIs rely on the codebase of Relay 1.0, but we will soon move them to a separate project.

Lightcone Relay (2.0)

The lightcone relay has completed the design of its core business logic and the definition of many data structures. We also finished the dependency injection using Google Guice for Akka actors. We are now working on the integration with Ethereum nodes, especially the block and transaction tracing functionalities to continuously and proactively monitor Ethereum data changes.

Overall, the development of the lightcone relay is still very smooth, but due to the high complexity of the system, it is slightly behind our original plan.

Frontend & Product

Apps

We partnered with Up Blockchain, a Hong Kong company, to jointly develop a noncustodial Ethereum wallet called Up Wallet. This wallet is based on our open-sourced Loopr-iOS project and is now available for download. This wallet has a fully native implementation of a Loopring DEX.

Up Wallet’s next plan is to be a fully compliant, securities token trading and management platform. We have also customized a similar wallet for a Shenzhen-based startup called vivwallet, which will also be launched soon.

Up Wallet and vivwallet also offer a P2P decentralized token trading function powered by the Loopring Protocol. Users can swap tokens by sharing their orders’ QR codes via social media, email/text/messaging platforms, or even printing it out and sending their friends a postcard.

A P2P Order shared by our Founder Daniel Wang in his *WeChat Moments*

During the collaborative development process, we made a number of important improvements to Loopr-iOS, including:

Converted HTML5 based DEX to iOS native DEX code;
The app can scan QR codes using the camera or by reading images to trigger P2P trades, or just to transfer Ether and tokens;
Fixed app crashing caused by network problems;
Improve the user experience while the app is loading data;
Updated colors, icon set, and fonts; improved the adaptability to different screen sizes.

Our progress in Loopr-Android development is also satisfactory. The primary functions of an Ethereum wallet have been implemented.

H5Dex

We released an enhanced H5Dex v1.1. With an optimized market view, users can quickly place orders based on market depth; we also optimized the experience of converting between Ether and wrapped Ether, as well as the experience in the order management and task list.

The core functionality of H5Dex v2 has also been initially developed. V2 enables users to open the DEX to place orders through mobile browsers such as WeChat, Weibo third-party applications and adds the function to invoke third-party Loopr-iOS-based wallet apps for signing transactions.

Other

We have completed all the features of RingTracker, which are being tested, and will soon be deployed.
We added multiple trading pairs to Loopr & Circulr, but no additional features were added.
Loopring.js published a v1.0.7 version with a new function for third-party authorization.

Operations & Marketing

Aug 24, 2018 — We now support three new tokens: TRUE, MOT, and TUSD, and added the following trading pairs: TRUE-WETH, TRUE-LRC, MOT-WETH, MOT-LRC, LRC-TUSD, WETH-TUSD, OMG-TUSD, RDN-TUSD, and IOST-TUSD.
Aug 27, 2018 — We announced the second LRN airdrop, took the snapshot at block 6248888, and will begin gradual release on Sept 5th.
Due to the airdrop requirement of bound addresses needing to perform a single Loopring protocol transaction for eligibility, protocol usage and volume increased with many people performing their first-ever Loopring network trades across some of our DEXs. We have great feedback and comments to consider.
Aug 31, 2018 —We announced the termination of our Medium translation bounty.

New Focus Areas

From Q4 onwards, we are adjusting our focus areas to the following four:

The frontend team will switch away from working on multiple open source solutions to dedicated commercial products, including an iOS wallet, an Android wallet, and a web DEX. These products aim to provide the best user experience.
The backend team will focus on the lightcone relay to provide high-availability and high-performance. We’d like to empower strategic partners to deploy lightcone to provide commercial cloud-based matching services.
We’ll keep upgrading our protocol to stay competitive. Protocol 2.0 will support more business scenarios, such as derivatives and other open financial infrastructure, and we will selectively build some of these into our own products. More scenarios will be available for our ecosystem partners to build their own products with noticeable differentiation.
Market making has become an important consideration for the Loopring protocol, and we will start improving DEX liquidity by working closely with professional market makers, and facilitating our third-party builders to have access to market makers as well. We also are working on a new way of adding, deleting, promoting, and demoting trading pairs, so token teams can be active in providing liquid markets for their tokens.

Ecosystem Activities

With so much development and activity going on — not just by the Loopring Foundation, but by the third-party projects building on top — we need a way to get the news out in an orderly fashion, and this is it. We’ll shine a light on updates from projects integrating the Loopring protocol.

MyToken

MyToken has completed the integration of Loopring protocol into their native iOS and Android apps. Users of the MyToken wallet can now trade in a decentralized, non-custodial manner over the Loopring network.
The total number of trading pairs tracked by MyToken platform now exceeds 20,000.
MyToken’s monthly update can be found here.

Dolomite

Our web application’s UI and UX flows are nearly finished. We are in the process of adding additional quality of life updates to ensure responsiveness and that first-time users can easily get acquainted with the interface.
The exchange API server cluster and RESTful interface are undergoing functional testing and integrations with the Loopring Relay.
The Slate Market API server cluster is undergoing setup to process Ethereum events automatically, allowing us to provide the plug-and-play functionality that will streamline the UX of frontend applications.
Released introductory blog post.

UP Wallet

Initial release of UP Wallet, a native iOS Wallex built from Loopring’s Loopr-iOS open source code base.
Testing with users, fixing bugs, mostly aesthetic fixes.
Offered users P2P trades in order to qualify for trading requirement for LRN airdrop.