Loopring Monthly Update — 2020/12

Happy, healthy new year! This is coming a week later than usual, as it was a very busy end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 for us. The delay hints at a most propitious sign for Loopring and zkRollups in general, as scaling becomes top of mind for everyone as Ethereum block space continues to be in incredibly high demand.

In December, we launched Loopring Protocol v3.6 and Loopring Exchange v2, and completed all functions related to the Layer 2 AMM. The Loopring smart wallet has integrated the above functionality and much more. We also released the new relayer API. On the non-development side, we launched various marketing activities including a liquidity mining program.

Loopring Exchange

We launched Loopring Protocol 3.6, which integrates AMM functionality on our zkRollup, among many other substantial efficiency and usability improvements vs 3.1. Atop the new protocol, we launched the first ever L2 AMM on Ethereum mainnet — Loopring Exchange (v2) — which you can access at exchange.loopring.io.

Liquidity providers on Loopring’s L2 AMM earn fees of 0.15% of trade volume, proportional to their amount of assets in the pool. There are also currently LRC liquidity mining incentives, see Operations section below.

Loopring Protocol 3.6 means our zkRollup supports token transfers, orderbook trading, and automated market maker swapping & liquidity provision. Users can experience all of these gas-free on our L2, with complete Ethereum security guarantees of their assets. You can see 3.6 deployment info here.

Another big improvement in protocol 3.6 is a much improved, and much cheaper onboarding to the zkRollup. No more distinct activation transaction needed for an L2 account. Just deposit, and you’re on.

We also released the new API and documentation of Loopring Exchange at docs3.loopring.io. The API document also includes some basic usage tutorials, which can facilitate programmatic traders to connect with Loopring’s Layer 2 liquidity, and allow developers to build products atop or around it.

Projects or developers wanting to use Loopring’s L2 for payments (gas-free, apparently instant transfers) should also look at the above API docs.

For data sites that want aggregate level information from Loopring Exchange such as supported markets, volume, and even APY stats, please take a look at this wiki.

We are currently testing the fast withdrawal function and look forward to opening up support for this feature to several assets in the first quarter of 2021. Fast withdrawals means you can move your assets off of the L2 back on L1 in the next Ethereum block (instead of waiting for a ‘standard’ L2 block to be filled up).

Loopring Exchange v1 will soon go offline

Given all the above, we announced that we will close the old v1 exchange, v1.loopring.io, on February 1, 2021 Beijing time. At that time, the API and the URL of the website will no longer be accessible. If you have assets on the old v1 exchange, please be sure to withdraw before February 1; otherwise, you need to directly interact with Ethereum to withdraw. (Which of course you can always withdraw from, that is a big benefit of a zkRollup, but it is just a more technical process).

In order to thank our early users for their support, we distributed nearly 800,000 LRC in retroactive ‘thank-you’ rewards. If you ever used Loopring v1, take that same Ethereum address to the new Loopring Exchange (exchange.loopring.io), click unlock (gas-free), and you will see 100 LRC rewarded in your Layer 2 account. That also means your address is already set up on L2 on the protocol version/exchange. The same goes for any past stakers of LRC. Once again, thank you all for being L2 pioneers.

Loopring Wallet

Loopring Wallet — our mobile smart contract wallet with our zkRollup natively supported — worked hard to catchup and integrate all the new protocol functionality. It integrated the Layer 2 AMM swap, add/remove liquidity functions, and more. Now you can easily trade on the AMM pools in Loopring Wallet, super fast, with zero gas fees.

In addition to getting the L2 AMM integrated in the mobile wallet, we also completed the following work:

• Added support for mobile phone numbers in multiple countries.
• Completed the language localization of English (we will soon start more wallet promotion in the English community).
• Improved the support for WalletConnect. Through WalletConnect, Loopring Wallet can interact with various Dapps by scanning a QR code.
• We have also added a ‘Market’ page, which is convenient for checking the market quotation before trading.
• In addition to Layer 2 AMM functionality, we have re-integrated the orderbook trading of Loopring Exchange v2 into the wallet. Users can now swap on AMM or trade on the books, choosing the best price between the two methods.
• In order to facilitate future event notifications, we have added an event notification function to the wallet homepage. You can view the latest event information that is about to be opened while checking in every day for ‘points’.

The Loopring Wallet is still only available to download for Android via APK at https://loopring.io. It will soon be in the Play Store.

In addition, we are intensively developing the iOS version of the app. Good progress has been made, and we strive to launch the TestFlight test version in early February.

LRC New Economic Model

We are working on the design of the LRC new token-economic model and plan to officially release it later this month. Our goal is to deeply bind the value and use of LRC with user behaviours that are conducive and productive to the development of Loopring’s protocol, products, ecosystem, and stimulate the power of the LRC community. As we have alluded to, the new LRC tokenomic model will be tightly coupled to the Layer 2 technology of the Loopring Protocol. It will also have as a main goal to make Loopring’s liquidity not a short-term phenomenon, but a permanent built-in feature empowered by the new economic model.

Operations

Completed Incentives

• Withdrawal mining: The one-month Loopring withdrawal mining program has ended, and all 1 million LRC rewards have been distributed. During the event, the maximum APY was as high as 34%, and the total Layer 2 assets of wallets were up to 37.02 million US dollars.
• Layer 2 airdrop rewards: We distributed more than 800,000 LRC to Loopring exchange v1 users and users who staked LRC. Each user can receive 100 LRC at the new Loopring Exchange.
• The final orderbook liquidity mining on Exchange v1 with AMP was completed.

Upcoming/current Incentives

A round of liquidity mining is currently underway for Loopring’s L2 AMM and orderbooks, rewarding LPs and swappers.

• AMM Liquidity Mining (1st Cycle): Loopring will provide 400,000 LRC rewards for each of the three AMM pools of LRC⇄ETH, ETH⇄USDT and WBTC⇄ETH; at the same time, the following pools are also enabled for liquidity mining by their corresponding token issuance teams.

- AC/USDT to reward 9,600 AC
- vETH/ETH to reward $15,000 in LRC
- WOO/USDT to reward $4,600 in WOO and 5% more in LRC
- MCB/ETH to reward 1,050 MCB and $230 in LRC

• AMM Swap Tournament (1st Cycle): Loopring provides 100,000 LRC rewards for each of the three AMM pools of LRC⇄ETH, ETH⇄USDT and WBTC⇄ETH. Swap Tournament is also enabled for the following poos by their corresponding token issuer:

- HBTC/ETH to reward 50,000LRC
- vETH/ETH to reward $3,000 worth of LRC

• Orderbook Liquidity Mining (21st Cycle): Loopring provides USDC/USDT and DAI/USDT with 100,000 LRC liquidity mining rewards each.

Read more about the above incentive programs here. They are currently live.

We created some simple video walkthroughs of onboarding, and of swapping and adding liquidity with the new Loopring Exchange on our Youtube channel.

Our new Dune Analytics dashboard has all the new protocol, exchange, and wallet data, visible at: https://duneanalytics.com/loopring

We passed 10k users on our L2, including over 3k of which are on the Loopring Wallet, and over $80m of assets housed on the L2.

Stats from https://duneanalytics.com/loopring

We launched a Loopring Espanol blog! Thanks to the great community members leading that effort.

Our Discord started its first two language channels besides English: Spanish and Italian!

We had our 2nd ever Loopring community call. Video recording here.

In the News & On the Ground

• Brecht and Matt of Loopring spoke with Anna of Zero Knowledge podcast, going over the history of Loopring, how we became the first zkRollup on Ethereum, the tech side, business side, and more.
• Matthew did a written interview all about Loopring and L2 for the Decentralise newsletter.
• L2 exchanges Loopring & DeversiFi have joined forces to establish an industry L2-specific committee & working-group, titled L2 Squared (or L²).
• Loopring Exchange v2 data is now listed on OKLink.
• Loopring Exchange v2 data is listed on Debank.
• Loopring protocol 3.6 TVL is listed on DeFi Pulse.

https://defipulse.com/loopring

• Cryptoouf published an article introducing Loopring Protocol 3.6, in French.
• In the 2020 CHAINSIGHTS Awards, Loopring Protocol won the “Blockchain Annual Technology Breakthrough Award”. CHAINSIGHTS Awards is a special blockchain award selected by T-EDGE Global Innovation Awards in China.
• Loopring updates were in Week In Ethereum, EthHub weekly, and Delphi Digital reports, and more.

About Loopring

Loopring is an Ethereum zkRollup protocol for scalable, secure exchanges & payments. Loopring builds non-custodial, high-performance products atop our Layer-2 protocol, including the Loopring Wallet — a mobile Ethereum smart wallet, and the Loopring Exchange — orderbook and AMM DEX with no gas-fees. To learn more, you can sign up for our Monthly Update or see Loopring.org.

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