Loopring.io Trading Fee Schedule & A Comment on Crypto Black Thursday

Matthew Finestone
Loopring Protocol
Published in
5 min readMar 14, 2020

We have lowered Loopring Exchange trading fees significantly.

  • Taker fees are now between 0.06% and 0.1%;
  • Maker fees remain 0%.

The trading fee schedule, which takes into account past 30-day trade volume, and past 30-day average LRC holdings, are as follows:

Loopring.io DEX trading fees

The Honor VIP tier — which enjoys the lowest trading fees for life — is granted to the first 1,500 accounts on the Loopring Exchange, of which there are still ~150 spots available. You have until the end of March 15 (EST) to claim one.

We are lowering the trading fees for a few reasons:

  1. At launch two weeks ago, taker trading fees were 5x higher than they are now: between 0.1% and 0.5% across the tiers. That was simply too high for our liking, and too high for the landscape. Uniswap charges 0.3%, dYdX charges 0.15% to 0.5%, and several CEXs charge up to 0.5% and beyond. To our knowledge, our new 0.06% taker fee is the lowest among DEXs & CEXs, and even the default 0.1% tier is among the lowest.
  2. Because we can. The Loopring protocol is simply the most performant and secure DEX scaling protocol out there. Our zkRollup secure scaling means lower trade settlement costs for a Loopring-DEX owner. We can pay 750x less gas than a Layer 1 DEX pays to settle a trade on Ethereum. We want to use this advantage — and pass on the savings to users — big time.
  3. Crypto Black Thursday crash put a strain on the entire DeFi ecosystem, and the Ethereum network itself, and it was scary. Loopring.io — and the Loopring protocol — stood up well to the throughput shock, but sadly, we mostly stood on the sidelines. We wished there were more traders who either knew about or were on our Layer 2 DEX. It would have allowed them to seek shelter and:

A) execute trades instantly on the exchange, instead of 9 hours later or not at all.

B) pay a minimal trade fee (which covers gas) instead of absurdly high gas fees.

But alas, 99% of Ethereum users weren’t on the exchange, and thus we couldn’t play a more prominent part in helping out. But next time (hopefully no such next time), we hope our high-speed highway can help alleviate the jam on the main road.

Of course, it is not surprising that after only two weeks, there were only so many traders (~1,315 accounts) on the first zkRollup DEX, and with only so many assets deposited thereon ($1.1 million).

Interestingly, with Loopring, as a zkRollup scaling solution, the efficiency boost lies in the batching: executing thousands of trades off-chain in a provably correct way, and submitting/verifying a small proof on-chain. For this, the DEX pays only an overhead gas cost of ~220k gas to settle. That means we want to fit as much in a batch (rollup block) as possible, which in our case is currently 1024 trades, but could be 4096 eventually. A DEX then pays only ~320 gas for each trade in data availability cost. In optimal conditions — with 4096 trade requests in a batch — that means we can settle a trade for 375 gas per trade. All in, with off-chain prover cost, we can settle a trade for less than $0.000124 per, or 1,000,000 trades for $124 at normal gas costs. Some people spent more than $124 to settle a single trade on Thursday.

But without trade demand allowing us to fill up blocks, we need to settle smaller blocks, which are less cost-efficient. Indeed, our cost to settle a typical trade today is higher (~40k gas) because the overhead isn’t being amortized over more trades. That is still better than any other DEX, but not up to our potential. So weirdly enough, we need more users and more demand to make things hum as fast, cheap, and smoothly as possible.

https://duneanalytics.com/loopring

So please help us help you, and get on Loopring DEX. You will be better prepared to profit (or protect yourself) in the exact moment when it matters: when everyone else is trying to do the exact same thing.

In fact, if you ask me, leaving some assets on Loopring.io would be wise because A) it is just as secure as Ethereum — as long as Ethereum exists, users can get their assets back, period; and B) because depositing/withdrawing from the zkRollup requires an on-chain tx, you may face the slow & expensive congestion if you wait to enter until you really need it.

Cheers to Ethereum and DeFi surviving a significant shock, and coming out stronger on the other end! Now let’s start using the scaling that is live today!

Please note, for the next ~34 hours, the next ~150 accounts that register on Loopring.io, will become an Honor VIP, enjoying the absolute lowest taker trading fees of 0.06%. And of course, 0% for makers. More info here. You can lock in these 0.06% trading fees for life very easily.

Further, please note that starting on March 16 (EST), for two weeks, we will have a trading competition on Loopring.io, for which there is 500,000 LRC in rewards. Each day there is 15,000 LRC up for grabs for traders, and a final prize of 50,000 LRC. Please see here for more info. We are excited for traders to realize that trading on a DEX can feel like a CEX, without compromising security. And now with the lowest trading fees around.

Loopring is a protocol for building high-performance, non-custodial, orderbook-based exchanges on Ethereum. You can sign up for our Monthly Update, learn more at Loopring.org, or check out a live exchange at Loopring.io.

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