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: