We skipped our last bi-weekly report, so this one includes all updates over the last four weeks.
Our first full-time European developer, Brecht Devos, came onboard from Belgium on July 15th.
Brecht graduated from Ghent University with a master degree in Computer Science Engineering. He used to work at Graphine, a small company that creates software used in video games and the VFX industry. Brecht is the top contributor in both optimization bounties for Loopring smart contracts and has earned more than 600,000 LRC rewards. Brecht will team up with Freeman Zhong, Loopring’s smart contract architect, and Daniel Wang, our Founder, to focus on Loopring Protocol 2.0 implementation.
In addition, two more Java developers will join Loopring in August. They will help develop Relay 2.0. By then, the Loopring team will have a total of 21 full-time engineers.
Protocol
On Ethereum
Over the past four weeks, we have been focusing on the design and implementation of protocol 2.0. On July 7th, we shared the overall design objectives and release schedule at the 2018 Blockchain Economic Summit in Shenzhen, China.
Our engineers have made noticeable progress — the ring data encoding/decoding feature, and the multihash signature support are both code-complete and are being tested. The JavaScript reference implementation is also in progress.
In order to apply for patents in China, the detailed design and coding of Protocol 2.0 has to be carried out inside a private GitHub repository. We will open source the project once our patents are filed in China.
NEO
We airdropped the first tranche of LRN on July 5th. LRC token holders can claim their LRN using our Loopr wallet without unlocking a private key (the watch-only mode will work). The airdropped LRN will be released linearly over two years and is claimable once every 24 hours.
This airdrop is entirely transparent and auditable as all operations were on-chain using smart contracts. There were 2836 valid NEO addresses bounded for a total of 7,888,163.46 LRN. These LRN token correspond to over 394 million LRC.
We want to thank gate.io, syex.io, cex.io, drangonex.im, and lcex.io for supporting this LRN airdrop. Their LRN token is also locked and gradually released over the same two-year period.
On September 5th and November 5th this year, there will be two more LRN airdrops. LRC holders who have not participated in the first airdrop can bind addresses to be part of the next two airdrops.
Please be aware that the Loopring Foundation will make rule adjustments to all subsequent airdrops (including the next two LRN airdrops). It is likely that the rules for each airdrop will be different. We will issue a separate statement for each airdrop to explain the new rules before the airdrop happens.
Due to the versatility and relatively powerful functions of the Loopring protocol, the settlement of rings has a certain degree of computational complexity. In the current NEO network, settling a ring of two orders exceeds the NEO’s free quota of 10 gas, and ends up with the trading fee being much higher than settling a similar ring in Ethereum. Fortunately, through our communication with the NEO team, we confirm that NEO 3.0 will significantly modify their fee model. We look forward to the release of NEO 3.0 and expect it to solve the fee obstacle we are currently experiencing.
DEX Backend
Relay 1.0
Previously we tried to use IPFS to share orders, but many challenges remain in such solution. We switched to use Matrix, an open network for secure, decentralized communication, to share liquidity (orders) among relays. We have completed the integration with Matrix and will perform more testing in the coming weeks.
We have also implemented a proof-of-work (PoW) style throttling solution to control the overall load of a relay. Each DEX will have to perform a client-side computation to come up with a valid nonce for each order to make it acceptable by the relay. The implementation has many details to be taken care of in the months to come.
We also improved documents regarding compiling and deploying miner component of the relay.
Relay 2.0 (Lightcone)
The Loopring Foundation has entered a partnership with Up Blockchain, a Hong Kong-based Ethereum wallet and DEX company, to co-develop Relay 2.0, a.k.a, Lightcone Relay. The image below shows the overall design objectives:
Because the development of Lightcone is a joint effort with a for-profit company, the Lightcone relay will adopt an open-source in-stage strategy to provide multiple versions of the source code for the community. We expect the first version to be open sourced in December 2018. Although the project is not open source from day one, we will still provide timely updates for our community.
DEX Frontend
In the past four weeks, the frontend projects have also made great progress. We also consolidated our frontend DEX solutions into one page for developers to review: https://loopring.io. We’ll continuously enrich our DEX solution.
Loopr & Circulr
We’ve open sourced the Ciculr project and deployed the latest version at ciculr.loopring.io. We will further improve the code base to provide a better experience.
We have also set up a new group of trading pairs called “New Listing” in both Loopr and Circulr. The Loopring team will list new ERC20 tokens on a weekly basis. The listing is free of charge. You can submit your application at the bottom of this page.
H5Dex
We’ve finished coding of the embeddable H5Dex dApp which will be open sourced in August. We will integrate H5Dex into a wallet app for Up Blockchain, one of our ecosystem partners, and launch H5Dex as an independent dApp inside imToken. The imToken dApp will be available for testing in about two weeks. It will share the same set of tokens and trading pairs with Loopr and Circulr.
Apps
In the past month, we worked closely with our partner Tokenest to collaborate on the development and release of their wallet iOS app. Tokenest iOS app is based on their own UI design but integrated with Loopring’s Loopr-iOS code base to provide most, if not all, functionalities. Tokenest app now has H5Dex integrated and also provides a QR code based peer-to-peer direct trading feature (very cool and useful for over-the-counter ERC20 trading).
In the meanwhile, we have resumed Loopr-iOS development with an improved UI. These improvements are:
- A new color theme, new gradient effects, new icons, charts, and fonts;
- Simplified the process to create and import wallets;
- Redesigned pages, including transactions, creating new addresses, settings, etc;
- More flexible app configuration management.
Operation & Marketing
- 06/28/2018: Loopring launched a Developer Portal to provide more technical documentations for developers.
- 06/28/2018: Loopring partnered with SECBIT Labs in smart contract auditing and formal verification;
- 07/03/2018: China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasted an interview with our founder Daniel Wang — Loopring Protocol: Powering a Better Crypto Trading Ecosystem.
- 07/05/2018: Loopring airdropped the first tranche of LRN to LRC token holders.
- 07/07/2018: Loopring announced the DEX Alliance Initiative;
- 07/07/2018: Loopring hosted the 2018 Blockchain Economic Summit in Shenzhen, China. We invited blockchain visionaries and entrepreneurs to share their stories and visions. Some of the keynote speakers are Alex Gordon from Omega One, Feng Cao from PChain, Yu Guo from SECBIT Labs, Cindy Liu from MXBank, and William Gee, a senior partner from PwC Hong Kong. Our Founder, Daniel Wang, shared what Loopring has accomplished over the last 340 days since ICO and demoed our DEX solutions to the audience.
- 07/08/2018: Loopring evangelists from more than 30 cities in China joined Loopring’s after-party to brainstorm ideas regarding community management, ecosystem strategy, and product marketing. We have set up a unique program to reward these evangelists which will also greatly benefit the adoption of Loopring’s DEX solutions. More information will be made available in September.
- 07/20/2018: We listed ten ERC20 tokens as the first batch in “New Listing” section. These ten tokens are AION, BKBT, BNB, CPC, DET, GTO, HT, PNT, TEN, and WTC.
For more up-to-date information, join us on social media:
⭑ Twitter: twitter.com/loopringorg
⭑ Reddit: reddit.com/r/loopringorg
⭑ Telegram: t.me/loopring_en
⭑ Telegram: t.me/loopringfans (Chinese)
⭑ Kakao: open.kakao.com/o/gJbSZdF (Korean)
Moments at the 2018 Blockchain Economic Summit：
