The second quarter of 2024 was highlighted by the release of our all-new Loopring Smart Wallet, which is now a smart-contract powered EOA hybrid wallet with Multi-Network functionality built right in.

This new wallet is part of the foundation, along with our upcoming Loopring Layer 3 release, that will drive the Loopring ecosystem into the future as we become a Multi-Network brand, with the goal of becoming a true all-in-one super app ecosystem for every crypto user across the globe.

On the community side, we unveiled a cool charity NFT collaboration along with members from the Wu Tang and the team behind DOGE, thanks to the help of community favourite Ryan Kagy. We also saw the original NFT Marketplace on Loopring, LoopExchange, expand to support multi-network by integrating Taiko NFTs.

Read on for many more details and highlights as well as a few things to look forward to in the Loopring ecosystem.

Milestones

• 230K+ total L2 accounts — a spike of over 10K new Loopring L2 accounts created over the second quarter of 2024
• The new Multi-Network Loopring Smart Wallet launch — the new EOA / smart contract powered hybrid wallet with improved user experience that will take us multi-network is finally here
• Taiko x Loopring collab continues — our close partnership with Taiko continues to push forward in 2024 with our multi-network wallet rollout and upcoming Layer 3 offering

Q2 Summary 🔹

A summary of our highlighted announcements and releases over the course of Q2/2024.

1. The New (Multi-Network) Loopring Smart Wallet

The next evolution of the Loopring Smart Wallet has arrived as we take it Multi-Network. Now you will be able to deploy multiple Smart Accounts using the same address across various networks, all managed by a unique EOA wallet — a brand new smart contract powered, EOA hybrid.

The main improvements of the new Smart Wallet are:

• a new, more decentralized experience with no more requirement for guardians or centralized services for new users
• a much simpler user experience for users wanting to deploy and be able to recover the same wallet address across many networks

2. Loopring Portal Beta Launch

The new Portal experience on Loopring L2 has arrived — with plans for expansion to many more networks in the works.

Loopring Portal is a new flagship product to the Loopring ecosystem, allowing users to trade in a CEX-like trading environment but direct from the security of their self-custodial wallets.

On top of this functionality, Ethereum users can also now trade (with up to 5x leverage) many tokens outside of the Ethereum ecosystem — like DOGE, WIF, SOL, BTC + many more — without having to bridge to different networks or to a CEX.

Stay tuned to our socials for upcoming announcements as we take this flagship product Multi-Network with the launch of Loopring protocol as a Layer 3.

3. Community Call #3: Full Recap

This past quarter we continued forward with our new-format community calls to provide a way for the team to share information regarding current projects and upcoming features, as well as give the community the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback.

4. The 2024 Moody Brain (Loophead) Challenges

An opportunity for more Loopring community members to join the official Loophead Club is here! Anyone with an activated Loopring L2 address can now participate in the new task challenges and have a chance to win the NFT prizes.

The challenges are simple:
✅Complete tasks (try out new products) to qualify
✅Win a new Moody Brain (Loophead) NFT or other prizes

The first task is to deploy a Taiko mainnet wallet within the Loopring Smart Wallet app.

For a limited time, you can now deploy a new (smart contract powered) Taiko mainnet wallet for free. This will qualify you for future NFT giveaways once the new binding functionality is rolled out.

5. TAIKO Community Airdrop

As a token of appreciation for the Loopring Community, Taiko officially reserved a portion of their TAIKO token distribution specifically for the Loopring community.

2.5 million TAIKO tokens were reserved for Loopring Community members who met the active user criteria we set out and we made distributions of the TAIKO token to binded addresses from June 4th — July 4th.

6. TAIKO Trading Now Live On Loopring L2

In Q2, we were pleased to support the TAIKO token and facilitate USDC ⇔ TAIKO swaps directly on Loopring L2 shortly after the token’s release.

You can now swap TAIKO in your Loopring Smart Wallet or on the Loopring Pro web app by using the swap tab or executing orders directly in the DEX order book.

7. Loopring Protocol + Wallet Upgrades

We added a number of new upgrades + features throughout the Loopring L2 ecosystem this quarter. Check out some of the main highlights below👇

Multi-Network Support for Loopring Smart Wallet with a Complete Re-Architecture:

• Newly created smart wallets can now be deployed on various supported networks using the same address
• Users can manually back up the seed phrase to ensure full self-custody
• For newly deployed account abstraction smart wallets on the Taiko network, no official guardian will be added, eliminating dependency on Loopring’s central service
• The updated cloud backup mechanism removes dependency on Loopring’s backend service, providing a more decentralized implementation
• Started using React Native to implement various modules on the Loopring Smart Wallet

Continued Improvement of Account Abstraction Smart Wallet Implementation:

• Optimized the bundler implementation to speed up the overall on-chain transaction process
• Allowed users to speed up or cancel submitted UserOps on the fly

Security-Related Activities:

• We are now work closely with professional security group SlowMist to strengthen the security infrastructure of the Loopring backend
• Reinforced security checks for Loopring Official Guardian usage — all social recovery requests will now be pre-examined to ensure no abnormal abuse occurs

Miscellaneous:

• Implemented a token list framework for Portal usage and added more hot tokens that are not ERC-20 standard
• Created Taiko trading pairs on Loopring DEX immediately after Taiko’s launch
• Implemented EIP-6963 support and integrated WalletConnect Web3Modal for all Loopring dApps (Loopring Pro, Loopring Earn, Loopring Guardian)

As always, we will continue to gather feedback from the community as well as work with our partners to add new features, tools, and improve the usability of Loopring L2 so that users can truly move closer to becoming their own bank.

Hottest features in your Loopring Smart Wallet🔥

In a new addition to the Loopring Quarterly updates, we’re going to highlight some of the most popular features that have been gaining attention and usage during the past quarter.

The All-New Loopring Portal

🔹BTC — SOL — ETH — WIF — DOGE🔹

Trade it all and more with CEX liquidity + up to 5x leverage direct from your Ethereum wallet in Loopring Portal.

Block Trade — Q2 expansion

You can now swap between USDC ⇄ USDT with deep CEX liquidity direct from your self-custodial wallet. No more having to deposit to a CEX and lose custody of your assets!

Both USDT and IMX tokens were added to Block Trade on Loopring L2 this past quarter, with more to come in the future.

Path Forward 🔹

The following is a currently expected product development roadmap from the Loopring Foundation team. Please note that while these products + features are in development, timing cannot be guaranteed as priorities can shift over time based on internal or external circumstances.

1. Loopring x Taiko Continues With Loopring L3

Loopring’s Multi-Network future is coming to fruition, not only with our new wallet rollout, but also with the expansion of our ZK-Rollup protocol as a Layer 3.

This new stack, which will deploy on top of many other networks, will be the foundation of our new Loopring Earn DApp, which will contain many unique DeFi and earning products like Dual Investment, Loopring Portal as well as Block Trade — letting users everywhere experience these new flagship products, no matter what network their funds are already on.

Stay tuned to our socials for many announcements over the coming months as well begin to roll this out — beginning with Taiko mainnet!

2. Loopring Decentralization Effort

We are currently undergoing a new effort to bring Loopring into the future by making all products scalable and robust with a strong decentralization push — which is why you may have noticed a lower Github activity on our public repositories.

We have directed a lot of developer resources over the past weeks at rearchitecting our security in the backend and undergoing a massive decentralization effort, which we think will be very beneficial over the long term to remove as many dependancies on Loopring centralized services as possible.

A couple of the main benefits to users:

• ensuring that users of the Loopring Smart Wallet will always have access to their funds and are able to make transfers or withdrawals even without Loopring services in the case of outages
• rearchitecting the backend products like Portal, Block Trade, etc, to ensure users have maximum uptime — making these products truly scalable for other networks

This is all part of our overall, long-term strategy to focus on Loopring L3 DApps and the Smart Wallet to make sure they are as secure and scalable as possible for our Multi-Network rollout.

If we want these products to be adopted by large amounts of users across every network, we need them to be as decentralized and robust as possible with maximum uptime and little to no dependencies on any centralized services.

While this does mean some of our other new product rollouts have been potentially pushed back by some weeks (the browser wallet, trade agents, etc), we have also been simultaneously developing some other new products, like our own bridging solutions to ensure smooth and easy options for bridging, which will also be necessary for a clean user experience while multi-network.

3. Loopring Portal Expansion

The new Portal experience has now arrived on Loopring L2 — in the coming weeks and months, we have plans to expand this product Multi-Network with new tokens as well as demo trading coming also in the future.

Loopring Portal is a new flagship product in the Loopring ecosystem, bringing a CEX-like trading environment (with real CEX liquidity) direct to your self-custodial wallet. No depositing to a CEX required!

We believe this product has the potential to be a game-changer across Ethereum, offering a truly unique trading experience. We want to bring this experience to every user by rolling it out on Loopring L3 on top of every network across Ethereum, starting with Taiko mainnet soon.

Loopring Portal will also be expanding to many more token pairs, with the goal of serving up every hot or in-demand token across crypto (not just Ethereum-native tokens) to users straight to their self custodial wallets — on any network they already have their funds.

Demo Trading on Loopring

Another new feature that is going to be rolled out soon within the Portal is demo trading.

Not everyone is experienced enough in trading to be able to handle leverage or margin trading. This is why we will be introducing demo trading in the new Loopring Portal.

Anyone will be able to claim demo tokens (that have no value by nature — similar to testnet tokens), and use these tokens to test out trades with leverage.

Paper trade for fun, or test out strategies, and see how they play out before putting real money behind the trades — another way Loopring is helping new users onboard into crypto in a safe and secure way.

4. Multi-Network Expansion

Loopring’s new Multi-Network future is now well underway, with the foundation being built for many more network activations.

Over the months ahead, a primary focus for us will be expanding Loopring beyond its current isolated L2 ecosystem, transforming it into a multi-network brand. Our goal is to offer some of the best user-facing products in crypto — available to any user, anywhere they are.

You’ve already seen the rollout of our new hybrid Loopring Smart Wallet, which is now Multi-Network capable, with Taiko enabled. Next is our Layer 3 rollout, which will bring new, unique DeFi and earning products to users on other networks.

Once the framework of these new products are in place and the kinks are worked out, you can expect many more networks to be activated over the following months.

5. Easy Bridging + Fast Withdrawals

In the second half of this year, we’re going to be rolling out a new bridging options to Loopring L2 users that will cut down costs on deposits and withdrawals for popular coins (including ETH, LRC, USDC, USDT, IMX) by around 50% — it will also speed up the process to around a minute.

We will also be simplifying the overall bridging experience for users, making it easier to quickly bridge from one network to another — whether that’s simply from Loopring L2 to Ethereum or a more complex hop from Taiko to Loopring L2.

For simple withdrawals, there will be a new trusted option, offered to users as an alternative to the trustless Ethereum bridge, which can take 30–60 minutes and potentially incur very high costs if Ethereum L1 is congested.

For more complex bridges to other networks — users will be able to choose between the trusted (like Orbiter, LayerSwap, etc.) and trustless solutions. We believe in optionality and giving users lots of tools to use in any scenario they choose.

By cleaning up and simplifying this experience, we will also be setting the framework for adding new networks in the future.

Source : Loopring Protocol - Jul 17, 2024