In this update we will share our progress on our wallet UI/UX design, and protocol v1.1 development. Please note that this report only covers 5 work days because of the Lunar Chinese New Year.

Development

Protocol

We have implemented Dual Authoring, our solution to front-running. The code has been merged into the master branch. We have also accomplished several optimizations, including 1) updating public the protocol’s interface to minimize the data footprint in Ethereum transactions, 2) introducing an internal struct RingParams to clean up internal application logic, 3) optimizing the calculation of a ring-hash. The master branch is now ready to branch out into a new v1.1 branch for deployment. The v1.1 release still doesn’t incentivize wallets, but all the methods and parameters are defined and will be compatible for a future v1.2 release which is due in April. V1.2 will pay wallets 20–25% of the mining fee.

We have also made some progress on our LRN smart contract on NEO, and we are currently busy with the airdrop smart contract. We have also reached an agreement with OnChain to have them review and audit our smart contract code.

Wallets

We have been making steady progress in Loopr2, our web-based wallet. Almost all of the core functionalities have been implemented. We have also optimized the overall trading UX to make sure it is consistent with the that of our iOS app. Many technical details will be hidden from the users for better user experience.

In Loopr2, binding Qtum and NEO addresses is feature available once a wallet is unlocked. Another done feature is to allow users to export wallets as keystore files. In the meanwhile, we have also refactored the structure of the wallet code to enhance its overall quality for better community reuse.

For Loopr-iOS, our native iOS app, we have concluded our UX design and are working on the final touches of the styling. Our iOS app will feature a minimalist black-and-white design. All design deliverables will be also open-sourced as part of the loopr-ios repository in a week or two.

Our engineers have prototyped gestures, such as holding, dragging and dropping to reorder a list of markets and assets, and swiping to add a market to a favorite list. A pie chart to display the fill rate has been added to the list of open orders. In addition, night mode has been added to the iOS app. We have also implemented a QR code feature and started to add localization supports.

We are also talking to several Android developers to explore the possibility of working on our Android app together as well as continuing to make sure that all core logic in the Android app is also open-sourced.

Relay-Mesh and Relay

Recently the work on Relay has been driven by the new requirements of the wallets. So far all APIs are well defined and most of them have been implemented and are being tested.

Another important initiative is to scale the relay to the enterprise levels. One of our newly onboard full time engineers is dedicated to reviewing the overall design so we can switch to a service oriented RPC architecture. This initiative will be ongoing throughout the year.

Relay-Mesh has been relegated to a low priority for now and will be something we will work on later this year, once we have released our fully functional wallets and relay.

Whitepaper Rewrite

Daniel is working with Matthew Finestone and Chenxi Cai, two community contributors, on writing our new whitepaper. We plan to update the whitepaper to reflect Loopring’s latest developments, including our current fee model, dual authoring, etc., and obsolete features mentioned in our original whitepaper that we have now abandoned.

Official Website Redesign

Our website https://loopring.org has been redesigned. We plan to roll it out in April. Take a peek at our first revision:)

Operation and Marketing

  • 02/22/2018：We obsoleted a centralized service for binding Qtum/NEO airdrop addresses, and switched to an Ethereum smart contract based solution.
  • 02/24/2018: Loopring co-hosted an Above Blockchain Conference with Blockchain Beach at Santa Monica, California. We had the good fortune of having leading industry experts in the network, and the chance to learn and share with the best in SoCal.
  • 02/24/2018: Loopring was invited to be part of Intersekt, Australia’s first FinTech Festival. During the visit, Loopring and YBF Ventures entered into a partnership to bring blockchain and DEX technologies to businesses across Australia.
  • 02/26/2018: We published a short introduction to Loopring Ecosystem Advancement Fund (LEAF). LEAF has been set up to incentivize our ecosystem development and to invest in blockchain (especially DEX) projects and companies.
  • 02/26/2018: Our founder Daniel participated in a panel discussion on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: Mystery, Mania or Bankable Opportunity? co-hosted by The Chinese Finance Association (TCFA) and Bloomberg.
  • 02/27/2018: We published a tutorial (in Chinese) to instruct participants how to withdraw LRC from our mid-term incentivization plan. So far 712.19 Ether has been returned and 5.34 million LRC have been withdrawn.
  • 02/27/2018: Daniel was invited by CryptoNYC and delivered a keynote on Loopring protocol.
  • 03/01/2018: We have decided to drop rocketchat and move to telegram.

A Note for LRN Private Sale Participants

Our SAFT stated we will deliver the first tranche of LRN to all private sale participants before May 15th 2018. However, we will try our best to beat the deadline. We’ll contact each and every private sale participant to collect NEO addresses via email at least one week before sending out LRN. Stay tuned.

A Note for Community Contributors

In our introduction to LEAF, we have mentioned:

All contributors need to submit monthly reports to summarize their contributions to qualify for LEFF rewards. They shall agree that these reports can be made publicly available for the community or third-party for evaluation. LEAF may not pay for small or ad-hoc contributions, and prefers to incentivize long-term and dedicated community contributors.

Therefore, to claim your monthly reward, you need to follow our guidelines and send us your monthly before the end of each month. Your reports will be made publicly available.

Please also note that we have hired @GiselleHou_Loopring, our community manager who will monitor and take care of questions in our English and Chinese telegram channels. We will stop related community rewards starting this month.

For more up-to-date information, join us on social media:
⭑ Twitter: twitter.com/loopring.org
⭑ Reddit: reddit.com/r/loopringorg
⭑ Telegram: t.me/loopring_en
⭑ Telegram: t.me/loopringfans (Chinese)