The year is 2030 — Earth (Ethereum)’s population has now been completely migrated off planet (Layer-2), with Earth becoming exclusively the security for these new colonies (the Global Settlement Layer).

In 2021, populations on Earth were becoming too large. It was overcrowded and becoming more-and-more uninhabitable due to environmental sustainability concerns, so low-Earth-orbit Stations (Layer-2s) began to emerge.

These new Utopia Stations (like Loopring Station) rekindled hope for the future.

They were secured in Earth’s orbit using Earth’s gravity. This way, if anything should ever happen to these new Utopia Stations, one could easily fall back to the security of Earth using its gravity through escape pods (force withdrawals back to L1).

Early on, people attempted to live part-time between these Stations and Earth, but this just proved to be too costly. Ship transfers to and from Earth (deposits + withdrawals) were just too expensive (so much fuel!). These new Utopias needed to become full-time, all-encompassing new homes.

Due to the exponential growth of the human population (Ethereans) and subsequent demand, a few Utopia Stations were built (other Layer-2s) across low-Earth-orbit.

Luckily, thanks to major innovations like Loopring Station’s EthPort — hyperloops were built between Loopring Station + Earth as well as Loopring Station + other stations, so people could easily use Loopring Station as a home-base and quickly and cheaply port to another station or Earth + back in a zap (one block) if needed.

Just like Earth had numerous countries with different cultures and values, these Utopia Stations evolved in a similar way. People chose to reside mainly on one or the other, as a home-base, depending on their personal preferences, cultures or values.

By 2030, Earth had migrated completely off planet and everyone lived in harmony on their new space homes, travelling freely between.

Okay — analogies are great, but back to reality — Here’s a complete guide to Loopring and some insight into how we are building this future, today.

TLDR :

• Loopring is building an all-encompassing Ecosystem for the entire Cryptoverse

• Upcoming major releases (EthPort + new web app + new mobile app + AMM/pool upgrades) will move us a huge step closer to this vision

• Think of Loopring Layer 2 as the self-custodial, trustless, secure version of Binance or Coinbase

• Depositing to a CEX (Centralized Exchange) + withdrawing from a CEX is expensive (gas/miner fees)

• Same for Loopring L2 (deposits + withdrawals still incur gas costs) — this is why we are building an all-encompassing Ecoystem — so once your Layer 2 account is funded, you should never need to leave!

• The future is trustless and self-custodial —
  users will ultimately choose to not trust centralized third parties with their funds (this is the foundation of crypto after all!)

• Loopring: a CEX user experience + all-encompassing Ecosystem but without the need to trust anyone else with your funds — powered by the magic of zkRollups + Ethereum base layer

What exactly is Loopring Layer 2

In a future where physical banks are no longer needed, thanks to the advances of blockchain technology, Loopring is harnessing this technology to build an all-in-one digital bank of the future.

Payments + transfers
Trading + swapping
Borrowing + lending
Earning + saving

Loopring aims to be the home-base for millions of people around the globe to securely self-custody their funds, while simultaneously having access to the entire stack of what the crypto universe has to offer.

All-in-one, trustless, self-custodial banking in your pocket — for the masses.

In the crypto space, a good parallel for Loopring is a Binance / Coinbase ecosystem, but completely trustless and self-custodial. A CEX (centralized exchange) experience (near instant transactions + cheap fees) but without having to trust anyone else with your funds.

To accomplish this future, we have taken on the ambitious approach of building the entire technology stack ourselves. A complete, vertically integrated approach that is truly unique in the crypto space.

The Infrastructure :

(zk-Rollups, secured by Ethereum)

First, we built an incredibly powerful zkRollup (Layer-2) on top of Ethereum to power it all.

zkRollups use incredibly advanced zero-knowledge proof technology while binding itself directly to Ethereum as its security base-layer.

“In the medium to long term ZK rollups will win out in all use cases as ZK-SNARK technology improves” — Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum)

Our zkRollup is extremely secure and only relies on math (not game-theory like other rollups) along with the base-layer security of Ethereum + Ethereum validators.

We strongly believe that this is the most future-proof technology out there, which is why we chose it as the base for our infrastructure that would power everything else on top of it.

You can read more on why Vitalik (creator of Ethereum) also believes zkRollups are the future here.

Unlike other Rollups (like Starkware, zkSync or Optimism), we built ours to solely run our applications and to build-out our ecosystem… not to be (general purpose) infrastructure for other peoples apps to run on.

The L2 Exchange (web app) :

(swap, trade, farm, earn)
exchange.loopring.io

Next, we built out the Loopring Layer 2 DEX (Decentralized Exchange) that is powered by the zkRollup infrastructure.

This is the application layer of Loopring, and where millions of users can interact with DeFi (decentralized finance) and the entire crypto universe.

This is where you can swap, orderbook trade, farm +earn (all gas-free!) — with nearly instant transactions that are up to 1000x cheaper than the same actions on Ethereum L1 — without compromising on your security thanks to the magic of zkRollups.

Here are the important points :

• Basic EOA wallets (like MetaMask) are not secure for any significant amounts of funds — if your passphrase is lost, stolen, phished or hacked, your funds will likely be gone as well — this is far too common

• Hardware wallets (like Ledger) are better, but still are a single point of failure — private keys are stored offline, but still can be easily lost, stolen, phished or hacked — if they are, you have no recourse

• Smart Wallets w/ Social Recovery are the future of self-custody

• If your device (wallet) is lost, stolen, phished or hacked — you have all sorts of protections in place to protect your funds

• Guardians can lock your wallet if you lose it — if it can’t be found your Guardians can also recover your funds onto a new wallet!

• With Smart functionality enabled, you can add white-lists of addresses you trust — your funds cannot be transferred out to other addresses by potential hackers or phishers — daily limits can also be set to add further protection

All-in-all there is no better security for your funds and this will enable us to securely onboard the masses into crypto.

The Loopring Smart Wallet also comes with Loopring Layer 2 Exchange (and all of its functionality) already integrated — the only crypto wallet with native, Layer-2 enabled gas-less transactions!

With a lot more upgrades and functionality coming soon (like EthPort + a fresh new look!) it really is the last and only wallet you will ever need.

For an in-depth tutorial on how to install + setup the mobile wallet — click here.

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