MLG Blockchain Consulting is committed to supporting unique and upcoming blockchain companies on their journey towards successfully integrating their technology. And we know many of you are curious to dive deep in the minds behind these novel blockchain startups.

In this Meet The Founder series, we aim to support your learning progression of the blockchain industry by asking insightful questions to the founders themselves! Today, discover the brainchild behind Loopring — Daniel Wang, a former JD.com employee.

How did you first get involved with the blockchain century?

One day while I was working at JD.com, I saw a reporting on China’s Central Television network that was trying to explain Bitcoin. I was so intrigued that on that very night, I downloaded Satoshi’s white paper and read it twice in one sitting. I was so impressed by the design of the system. During the months that followed, spent more time breaking down Satoshi’s white paper and slowly started buying some Bitcoins. I even tried to use Amazon’s free-tier AWS services to mine Bitcoin and Bitshares! It was really the best time to play around with Bitcoin because it wasn’t worth much, but now it’s serious money.

What inspired the idea of your blockchain company, was it spontaneous? Was it an idea you had for a long time?

My first startup, Coinport Exchange, resulted from my strong belief in decentralized digital money. My current project, Loopring Protocol, reflects my desire to develop a better way of trading tokens. One that does not rely on trusting an intermediary, but that remains secure and maintains higher levels of liquidity through the use of blockchain and smart contracts.

2. What did you do before starting Loopring? Did you demonstrate prior expertise in blockchain?

I worked for Zhogan Insuance for a very short period of time, mainly focusing on blockchain technology and asset trading with this technology. While I was there, I published two white papers but neither of them were implemented as they were not quite aligned with the company’s objectives at the time (which I totally understand). But then, when I had the idea for Loopring, I decided to run with it and to conduct an ICO in order to fund an engineering team to start developing the project.

3. Who is the team behind Loopring and why are they awesome?

Though there are many others working on Loopring, I’ll just introduce a few of us who are on the founding team: Johnston Chen, Jay Zhou and myself, Daniel Wang.

Johnston Chen is our COO-extraordinaire. Before joining Loopring, he was the Chief Information Officer for 3NOD, a digital tech company and a product expert in the finance industry. He brings a lot of experience to the table in these domains, which is crucial to Loopring’s success.

Next, is Jay Zhou who is our Chief Marketing Officer. Over the years, he’s acquired extensive skills in online payment and financial operations with a focus on risk management and innovative solutions. Prior to Jay’s work at PayPal, he worked across multiple industries including risk and compliance at Ernst & Young. He also has a deep knowledge and understanding of blockchain that he shares through articles on blockchain tech publications.

Lastly, I am the founder of Loopring and an expert in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. I’ve worked on and led various projects for companies including Boston Science, Google, JD.co, and Zhongan Blockchain lab. In 2014, I founded the crypto-exchange named Coinport, which was touted to have qualities of extreme transparency. After getting loads of experience on the traditional digital financial system and really understanding the ins-and-outs of the system, I came up with a new solution for digital currency exchanges.

If you’re interested in meeting the rest of the team, please visit the team page our website!

4. How did you bring this idea to life? Did you launch an ICO?

I began by writing the white paper for Loopring and then began sharing my idea with like-minded individuals in my network and in the industry and began to collect feedback. Eventually, I completed the concept based on feedback from these people. I then went on to launch an ICO, which ended in the middle of August. Thankfully, it ended before China instated its ban in September.

5. What problem does your blockchain plans to solve? How does Loopring solve that problem?

The overall aim for Loopring is to respond to the limitations of traditional exchanges that are leading to hacks and other problems in decentralized currency exchanges. We’re mainly attacking four weaknesses of current exchanges:

Problem 1: CounterParty & Exchange Risk — With Loopring, we’ve managed to remove this risk entirely because digital assets are never locked by orders. Therefore, rather than depositing assets on a third party exchange, they can stay in individual’s wallets

Problem 2: Low liquidity — Orders are ring matched, which is a multi-token circular trade, which allows for higher liquidity on any trading pair.

Problem 3: Unfairness across parties — Loopring’s fee and discount models allow for fairness between all parties involved in a trade (Makers, Takers, and Miners).

Problem 4: Weak Supervision -The whole system is decentralized and all transactions are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. This ensures transparency for all.

6. Please walk us through the user experience of someone who would use Loopring.

Imagine that your own 100 Ethereum on a small currency exchange, on which the volume is about 5 Ethereum per day and the whole order book is only about 100 Ethereum overall. Liquidating your stock would take about 20 days or would incur significant losses since the buy-orders have to be spread out over several prices that are lower than the current one.

Loopring wants to solve this problem by connecting cryptocurrency exchanges using blockchain technology so that orders are not limited to one exchange. For example, let’s say you’re using Bittrex but there is no buy-order to sell your coins at a given price. Loopring would fill the gap and ‘transfer’ the order to another exchange that has the capacity to fill that order.

The Loopring protocol ensures that you will always get the best price because Loopring will combine all the order books of participating exchanges for each cryptocurrency into a single order book. This would level out the prices across exchanges and would render the market more robust so as to protect it when large amounts of capital are moved.

7. How big is the market you are addressing?

According to the current market, our technology is targeting a market volume of approximately $4 billion USD per day. And, with a market that size there are a lot of opportunities!

8. Who are the major investors behind Loopring?

Our major investors are the crypto community. Since we raised our capital through an ICO, it was the community that funded the project! Pretty cool, no?

9. Who are you current non-blockchain competitors?

In reality, we mostly have blockchain competitors and, actually, there are a few that are undertaking a similar project, namely 0x, Airswap and Kyber.

10. Where is your company registered? Which country?

The Loopring Foundation is registered in British Virgin Islands.

11. What is your favourite blockchain that was created and why? Do you use it yourself?

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ZCash are my favourite blockchains. Anyone who truly appreciates blockchain technology should really love the Bitcoin blockchain. Ethereum introduced smart contracts, which are an incredibly powerful and wonderful addition to blockchain. And, ZCash pushed privacy to another level. Though I have to say that I use Ethereum almost on a daily basis for managing our assets and for making payments.

12. If you had the opportunity to meet the mysterious Satoshi Nakatomo, what is the one thing you would want to ask him?

That’s an interesting question. I would probably just ask him what he’s been up to these last few years. :)

How to connect with Loopring:

Developers are invited to join the Fellowship of the Ring here: https://github.com/Fellowship-of-the-Ring/Governance

Join Loopring on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/loopringorg/

Follow Loopring on Twitter: @loopringorg