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Pioneering zk-rollup Loopring closes DEX, citing lack of adoption
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- DeepHorus
Ethereum's first zero-knowledge rollup, Loopring, announced the closure of its decentralized exchange and automated market maker on Sunday, effectively ending all trading services and halting its relayer. The team cited a failure to gain meaningful adoption as the primary reason, alongside technological obsolescence and a lack of business development skills. This marks a significant end for a project that once pioneered zk-rollup technology on Ethereum.
Loopring raised $45 million in a 2017 initial coin offering and helped demonstrate that scaling Ethereum via zk-rollups was feasible. However, as technology evolved, the protocol was surpassed by more capable successors like zkSync, Scroll, and StarkNet. The team acknowledged their limitations: "We lacked a virtual machine, no composability, no real-world payment use cases. That limitation kept our ecosystem from growing."
The exchange's total value locked has plummeted to approximately $8 million, a staggering 99% decline from its $760 million peak in November 2021. Similarly, Loopring's native token, LRC, has collapsed from an all-time high of $3.75 in the same month to just $0.01. External pressures, including major exchange delistings of LRC in 2026, accelerated the inevitable closure.
The team stated they are "engineers at heart," excelling at coding but lacking passion or skills for business development. They noted that pressure from more advanced competitors with full Ethereum smart contract compatibility made their specialized architecture feel obsolete. Rather than running a hollow service, they chose to gracefully end operations.
Loopring plans to calculate and publish all final user balances, then distribute funds directly to users' Ethereum wallets in batches, covering gas fees. The closure follows the shutdown of its wallet services in July 2025, which was also attributed to scaling challenges.
One of Loopring's biggest milestones was a 2021 partnership with GameStop to power its NFT platform, launched the following year. Despite this high-profile collaboration, the protocol could not sustain adoption.
Loopring's demise adds to a growing list of crypto closures in 2026, as the bear market deepens. According to RootData, more than 60 crypto projects and protocols have shuttered services this year, including Entropy, Syndicate Labs, and Yupp. The future for early-stage rollups without composability appears dim, as the industry shifts toward more versatile zkEVM solutions.
