LRC (Loopring) - The Protocol for Hybrid Crypto Exchanges

The Best of Centralized and Decentralized Exchanges

We had a busy Week 12 of our 15 Weeks of Summer campaign, introducing CELO, COMP, MAKER, NMR and LRC on the Coinmetro exchange. Five important projects supporting our summer campaign, offering lucrative financial products and powerful economic systems. In this blog, we will focus on LRC – Loopring, looking to understand how the network provides control and transparency, powering highly scalable exchanges and payments.

LRC – A Standard in Exchange & Payment Protocol

Loopring is driven by a vision to offer protocols and infrastructure for the future of finance, via accessible user-facing products. The Ethereum Layer-2-based network offers both security and performance, doubled by low fees and a high-speed trading platform. Loopring achieves this without compromising on Ethereum’s security at all.

The protocol is proving to the world that DEXes can be as performant as CEXes, creating a digital economic space where users are empowered and always in complete control of their assets. 

Loopring wants to design and engineer the best-in-class zkRollup exchange and payment protocol on Ethereum, offering products and services to users all across the world.

Since the beginning, the team focused on offering fail-proof security and sovereignty of user assets as a top priority. They are the first to deploy the first zkRollup protocol on Ethereum, allowing users complete access to their assets in all circumstances. The protocol and exchange applications are designed in such a way that no other entity can intervene between a user and their Ethereum-based portfolio.

Loopring moves forward with a 100% Ethereum-level security, without relying on any external validators or consensus, except for Ethereum and Zero Knowledge cryptography. The system operates in such a way that all actions are correct by construction, otherwise, they would not happen. This way, exchange operators are constrained to purely protocol-described behavior.

Taking Advantage of Loopring

The Loopring protocol is bringing much innovation to the space by ensuring that an exchange or payment application simply cannot access or lose user assets. It uses an open-sourced, audited, cryptographically sound Ethereum protocol, meaning you can spend less time and money on security & compliance, and more on growing your business.

Besides using Loopring to power your exchange, you can also benefit from its payment functionality – as a fast, gas-free lane for users to deposit and withdraw Ethereum-based assets.

Loopring manages to solve scalability issues without having to compromise on security. The zkRollup throughput reaches approximately 1000x that of Ethereum, or as high as 2,025 trades per second, having a reduced cost per transaction of just 1/100th the cost of Ethereum, with trades and transfers costing fractions of a cent. With this being said, Loopring is blowing strong wind in the sails of non-custodial exchanges and payment apps, helping them perform better.

Truth be told, today Ethereum is so popular and heavily used, it operates in a frequent state of congestion, with users having to deal with unreasonably high fees and delays.

With Loopring, you can take advantage of the Layer-2’s fast-track where transactions flow freely, gas-free and with no delay.

Loopring Architecture

Today, Loopring is a multifaceted project, operating across the stack, from protocol to product:

LOOPRING PROTOCOL

Loopring protocolis a collection of Ethereum smart contracts and ZK circuits which describe how to build highly secure, highly scalable order book-based DEXes, AMMs, and payment apps. It was the first rollup protocol deployed on Ethereum and has led the ecosystem into the era ofLayer-2scaling (L2). The current protocol version, v3.8, is the fifth deployed version (the first three were non-zkRollup). It provides a solution for the most outstanding challenge of all decentralized protocols – performance – without a tradeoff in security.

LOOPRING RELAYER

The Loopring Relayer (aka operator) is the network’s implementation of the backend system that interacts with the protocol to make a zkRollup run. It hosts and updates the off-chain Merkle tree (hash tree), creates roll-up blocks, publishes data and proofs to Ethereum, and more.

The innovative relayer has been highly optimized for its use case: from order book matching to proof generation. The system operates in such a way that it can never, ever, access or freeze user funds – the protocol simply does not allow it.

LOOPRING LAYER2 APP

The Loopring Layer-2 App consists of a high-performance, non-custodial exchange and payment platform operated by the mother team. The app is built on the Loopring protocol, is run by the Loopring relayer, and provides one of the most advanced and enjoyable trading experiences on Ethereum: gas-free, blazing fast and completely secure, providing a new standard in the L2.

LOOPRING WALLET

Loopring Wallet is an Ethereum mobile smart contract wallet, with Loopring zkRollup built in. It is the first smart wallet app with L2 scaling and provides a secure, intuitive, and powerful Ethereum experience in your pocket. Swap on the AMM (automated market maker), become a liquidity provider, trade on the books, invest & earn in DeFi, send payments to anyone, anywhere – all gas-free, and at the tap of a finger.

The Loopring Wallet waves goodbye to seed phrases and paper backups, and welcomes in the social recovery system. This means choosing people, institutions, and hardware you trust as the guardians of your wallet. In case you ever lose access to your mobile, they help you recover your assets. As long as more than half of your guardians are trustworthy, your assets are secure. You can also set limits on daily transfers, and whitelist trusted addresses.

The LRC Token – Now Trading on Coinmetro

The issuance of LRC tokens is governed by the smart contracts comprising the Loopring Protocol. You can earn LRC via so-called “ring mining.” For improving liquidity, the orders in it are not matched strictly as pairs of two cryptocurrencies. The protocol instead mixes and matches up to 16 orders for different cryptocurrencies in a circular trade, called an “order ring.”

On the Loopring network, nodes are rewarded in LRC tokens for combining individual orders into order rings, maintaining public order books and trade history, and in some cases – broadcasting orders to other relays.

Stay in the Loop – With Coinmetro

Are you familiar with the other assets we listed last week? CELO, COMP, NMR and MAKER are now trading on Coinmetro exchange, and we are supporting the launch with in-depth articles about each project, in an effort to further educate and share the great potential of these tokens with our community. Read more about all listings on this BLOG. Opinions are best circulated on Coinmetro’s Discord and Telegram channels! Share your thoughts on these assets with the rest or learn something new about each project by engaging in active conversations. Got a question for our CEO and Founder Kevin Murcko? Feel free to tag him directly in the channels and he will be happy to answer himself. We are a community-driven exchange and we know knowledge is real only when shared.

To begin your trading and investing journey today, take action now and sign up to Coinmetro – one of the fastest-growing crypto exchanges in Europe.