WeDEX is not an affiliated company of Loopring and will operate independently. Johnston will continue his contribution to the Loopring & LRC ecosystem as Loopring’s co-founder and advisor. Loopring will provide WeDEX protocol-wise technical support and consultancy.

Daniel Wang, Loopring’s founder, said: “We are thrilled to have our former COO dare to pioneer the first DEX built atop our 3.0 protocol. It is a sign of confidence in Loopring’s DEX solution. We also congratulate WeDEX’s success in their first round of equity fundraising and look forward to their launch.” Johnston Chen: “You can tell from the [latest Ethereum] DevCon that Zero-Knowledge Proof-based scalability solution is becoming more popular. Loopring is one of the early adopters. WeDEX aims to become the first DEX using Loopring 3.0 to provide our users with not only security but also smoother, CEX-like trading experience. We will also build features around the LRC token to contribute back to the Loopring ecosystem.”

Loopring’s grant will enable WeDEX to increase their LRC Staking to lower their protocol fees and build up DEX ‘skin in the game’ — so WeDEX will have something at stake if their operations do not follow the protocol rules. This is a sort of economic finality to prevent disruption of trading, until the zkSNARK provides the cryptographic finality for each batch. Of course, the protocol’s non-custodial properties are ever-present, irrespective of staking.