As a blockchain agnostic exchange protocol, Loopring has always expressly stated that, in terms of cross-chain capabilities, we will defer to dedicated, expert teams in that space — hopefully integrating the best of the emergent solutions.

In that light, we’re glad to have been speaking with the Wanchain team, and exploring DEX-specific cross-chain considerations.

The LRC token has been integrated into Wanchain 3.0, bringing it full interoperability with Bitcoin, and in future, other chains they connect as well. Wanchain ported their first ERC20 tokens, DAI and MKR, to their platform last week.

Loopring is fundamentally a set of settlement-enforcing smart contracts and off-chain order messaging systems — the components to create flexible, non-custodial trading platforms.

The settlement logic could be deployed on top of any smart contract platform, and indeed, we have deployed on multiple: of course, Ethereum, on which we’ve been live on mainnet for 1 year (and have just deployed Loopring 2.0), and on NEO. This means that Loopring-built DEXs allow trustless trade between ERC20 tokens, and NEP5 tokens, respectively — but not interchangeably.

This is important: although we can deploy on multiple chains, the value thereon is captive to that chain; it cannot seamlessly ‘speak’ to assets on other chains, nor exchange across. In fact, when deploying on NEO, we issued a new token, LRN (Loopring NEO), since LRC (Loopring Ethereum) could not satisfy its role on a different chain.

There are many great efforts trying to lay interoperability over the disparate chains that currently exist and hold value. Right now, the greatest demand is for Bitcoin and Ethereum to interoperate.

Wanchain, with their recent 3.0 release, is a blockchain platform that enables just that: decentralized value transfer between Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains. Going forward, Wanchain will continue to connect blockchains, with a specific focus on enabling cross-chain financial functionality.

Jack Lu, Wanchain CEO

“Loopring is a critical component in our plan to build the future of finance in a decentralized manner,” said Jack Lu, Wanchain’s Founder and CEO. “Wanchain’s interoperability platform is an excellent complement to Loopring’s protocol and will set the stage for a more advanced DEX ecosystem with the ability to offer cross-chain trading pairs and increased liquidity. We expect 2019 to be an exciting year in the DEX space.”

Daniel Wang, Loopring CEO

“Loopring is honoured to have LRC be among the first protocol tokens integrated and supported by Wanchain. We’ve always been clear about focusing on building the most powerful decentralized exchange technology, and letting specialist teams tackle interoperability; Wanchain is clearly one of those leading teams,” said Daniel Wang, Loopring Founder and CEO. “With Wanchain, LRC can live cross-chain, without needing to issue new tokens per platform. Fundamentally, for DEXs to realize their true vision, cross-chain capability is crucial.”

Historically, one of the best reasons to NOT use decentralized exchanges — even if you wanted to avoid the custodial risk of centralized exchanges — has been because you couldn’t use DEXs to trade across different blockchain’s assets. When you’re trading IOUs on a central server (CEX), different chains do not matter. Equipping DEXs with the same flexibility is a must.

Now, any Ethereum-based dApp, DEX, or protocol can access Wanchain-wrapped BTC token, allowing for meaningful increases in liquidity. Wanchain-wrapping is also performed on the ERC20s (LRC and DAI) to facilitate the cross-functionality. Wanchain-wrapping LRC creates W-LRC, which removes the need to issue new Loopring tokens on future chains Wanchain supports.

This is a first step towards the deployment of the Loopring protocol on Wanchain, allowing third-party developers to build decentralized exchanges that support cross-chain value transfer. 2019 is already presenting some interesting opportunities!