Overview
- Loopring disclosed on Monday that it has stopped all trading, taken its relayer offline, and closed its decentralized exchange and automated market maker.
- The team said the project never gained meaningful user adoption and was outpaced by newer zkEVM-style Ethereum scaling networks that offered greater on-chain composability.
- Engineers acknowledged a core technical limit: Loopring’s rollup lacks a virtual machine, which they say prevented composability and broader payment and app use cases.
- Loopring will calculate final user balances, publish a review window, then send funds to users’ Ethereum wallets in team-run batches while covering gas fees, with accounts under $10 excluded and withdrawals restricted to whitelisted addresses.
- The shutdown follows a collapse in usage and value — TVL fell from about $760 million in November 2021 to roughly $8 million and LRC tumbled from $3.75 to about $0.01 — and it joins more than 60 crypto project closures recorded in 2026, raising questions about custody trade-offs for users.