What is Loopring?
Loopring is an Ethereum scaling protocol focused on trading and payments, founded in 2017 by Daniel Wang in Beijing. The mainnet zk-rollup went live in December 2019, which makes Loopring one of the earliest production zk-rollups on Ethereum, predating most of the rollups that dominate the L2 conversation today. The native token, LRC, is an ERC-20 with a total supply around 1.37 billion after mild emission cuts post-genesis.
The protocol does one thing well: it batches off-chain order matching and trades, then settles them on Ethereum L1 through SNARK-based validity proofs. The original v1 ran fully on Ethereum mainnet; later versions moved order matching off-chain while keeping settlement on L1, with throughput in the 2,000+ TPS range. The team also operates the Loopring DEX (an order-book exchange), the Loopring Wallet (an account-abstraction smart wallet), and the Loopring Earn product, which is what most casual users actually touch.
LRC price today
LRC trades against the dollar, USDT, and USDC on most major centralized venues. The quote on this page is volume-weighted across the exchanges with the deepest order books and refreshes every 60 seconds. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit usually carry most of the size. The all-time high near $3.83 was set in November 2021, during the GameStop NFT marketplace hype cycle, and price has not retested that level since.
What tends to move LRC on any given day:
- Loopring DEX volume. The protocol fee economics are tied directly to trades that clear through the Loopring zk-rollup. A quiet DEX week translates almost mechanically into less LRC demand from the staking and fee-share side of the design.
- GameStop-aftermath effects. The 2022 partnership wound down in 2024, and the residual sentiment around it still moves LRC more than it should. News tied to the old NFT marketplace, or to GameStop’s own crypto stance, tends to cause outsized reactions in either direction.
- Broader L2 rotation. LRC trades alongside Arbitrum, Optimism, ZKsync, Linea, and the rest of the L2 basket. When capital rotates out of L2 narratives, LRC fades with the group regardless of what the protocol itself ships.
- Zk-rollup competition. Newer zkEVM and zk-rollup chains have taken share that Loopring used to own by default. Headline launches and TVL milestones from ZKsync, Linea, and Polygon zkEVM put downward pressure on LRC even when Loopring has nothing bad happen on its own side.
- BTC correlation. LRC is a small to mid-cap altcoin tied to a sector narrative. On broad risk-off days it moves with Bitcoin regardless of what the team is shipping inside the ecosystem.
Live prices stream into the card above. The analysis below uses the levels at page load.
How Loopring’s zk-rollup works
Loopring is a zk-rollup that uses SNARKs rather than STARKs for its validity proofs. The basic mechanic is straightforward. Trades and transfers are matched and aggregated off-chain by the Loopring operator, batched into a block, and then a single proof is posted to Ethereum L1 along with the state transition. Anyone can verify the proof and check the new state, and once the proof clears L1, the rollup state is final. There is no seven-day challenge window like an optimistic rollup carries.
Throughput sits around 2,000+ transactions per second under normal conditions, with batched fees that come out a fraction of L1 trades. The trade-off is that the prover and the operator are centralized today, which is the standard caveat for every major rollup in production. Decentralization of the operator role is a known item on the long-term roadmap, not something that has shipped.
The original Loopring v1 was a fully on-chain protocol on Ethereum mainnet, which made it transparent but expensive. Later versions moved the heavy work (order matching, batching) off-chain while keeping settlement and proof verification on L1. That is the design split most people mean when they describe Loopring as a zk-rollup today. Trades clear on the rollup, custody stays with the user, and the L1 settlement layer is what makes the whole thing inherit Ethereum’s security.
Loopring DEX and Earn
The Loopring DEX is an order-book exchange that runs on the Loopring zk-rollup. That alone makes it different from most Ethereum DEXes, which are AMMs (Uniswap, Curve, Balancer). Order books match buyers and sellers at specific prices rather than swapping against a liquidity pool, which is how centralized exchanges are structured. The argument for an order-book DEX is that price discovery is tighter for liquid pairs and slippage is lower at size, especially for traders who want limit orders rather than market swaps.
Loopring Earn sits next to the DEX. It lets users supply liquidity to Loopring trading pairs and earn a share of fees, plus optional incentives in LRC. The product is positioned at the audience that wants yield without running their own LP positions on a generic AMM, and it routes most of its activity through the rollup to keep fees low.
In practice, Loopring DEX volume has been muted compared with the 2021 peak. The order-book design works mechanically, but the wider zk-rollup category has consolidated activity around a smaller set of venues, and Loopring is no longer the default choice it briefly was. That dynamic shows up directly in LRC’s fee-driven utility, which is one reason the token has lagged the rest of the rollup basket through several recent risk-on cycles.
Loopring Wallet: smart contract account abstraction
The Loopring Wallet is the part of the stack that ages the best. It is a smart contract wallet, not an externally owned account, and it shipped account abstraction features long before ERC-4337 turned the topic into a wider industry conversation. Social recovery, multi-signature setups, daily limits, and meta-transactions are all native to the wallet design rather than bolted on through external infrastructure.
Self-custody works the way most users actually want it to work. Lose access to your phone and you can recover the wallet through a quorum of guardians (other wallets, hardware keys, trusted contacts) rather than a twelve-word seed phrase that has to be written down on paper and never lost. The recovery flow is the feature that most defenders of Loopring point to first when explaining why the project still matters even if Loopring DEX volume has thinned out.
The wallet also handles bridging, swaps, and L1/L2 transfers from one interface, which is the user-facing piece of the rollup pitch. The catch is that smart contract wallets are not free to deploy on Ethereum. The first deployment costs gas, and a small number of advanced users prefer the lighter footprint of an EOA wallet like a standard hardware wallet setup. For mainstream onboarding, the Loopring Wallet trade-offs are mostly the right ones.
The 2022 GameStop NFT marketplace partnership
The headline event of Loopring’s recent history was the GameStop partnership. Announced in February 2022 and launched in beta in July 2022, the GameStop NFT marketplace was built on Loopring rails. The pitch at the time was an end-to-end self-custodial NFT marketplace from a brand with real distribution, settling on Ethereum through Loopring’s zk-rollup at fees a fraction of L1 trades.
The reality played out differently. Volumes never hit the levels the early speculation priced in. The marketplace ran for two years, expanded into power-up cards and gaming-related drops, and was eventually shuttered in 2024 after GameStop announced it was ending the NFT program. The Loopring rails worked through all of it, which the team is right to point out, but the partnership wind-down still removed a real chunk of the demand story that LRC had carried through the 2021-2022 cycle.
For LRC holders, the takeaway is that Loopring’s pricing has not fully detached from the GameStop narrative even years later. Activity tied to the partnership still moves the token more than the actual on-chain numbers justify, and the broader market has not given Loopring full credit for shipping the rails it promised. That mismatch is part of why LRC has lagged through the most recent rollup cycle.
How to buy and stake Loopring (LRC)
LRC is widely listed and easy to acquire on regulated venues. The decision worth thinking through is whether you want LRC as a market position, or whether you want to use it inside the Loopring rollup itself for fee staking, the DEX, or the Wallet. The path is slightly different depending on which one.
- Pick a regulated exchange that lists LRC. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit all carry deep LRC markets. Liquidity, transparent fees, and a real security audit matter more than rebate offers. Our exchange ratings compare the leading options on fees, security, and licensing.
- Verify your identity. KYC on regulated platforms usually clears in under 10 minutes. If you plan to use the Loopring Wallet for self-custody and on-rollup activity rather than just trade LRC, set up the Loopring Wallet on iOS or Android at the same time so deposits land directly into a smart contract account.
- Fund the account. Bank transfers (ACH, SEPA) are cheapest but settle in 1 to 3 business days. Stablecoin deposits (USDC, USDT) settle in minutes for the lowest fee. Cards are instant but cost 2 to 4% in spread.
- Place the order. LRC/USDT and LRC/USDC pairs typically carry the most volume. A market order fills at the current spot price; a limit order lets you set the maximum you are willing to pay. For positions over $5,000 on a smaller-cap altcoin, splitting the order over a few hours reduces slippage.
- Move LRC where it is useful. For long-term price exposure, withdraw to a hardware wallet on Ethereum L1. For self-custody plus on-rollup activity, send LRC to the Loopring Wallet. To stake LRC for a share of protocol fees, deposit through the Loopring app and stake from the Loopring hub. Always send a small test transfer first whenever you move a meaningful amount.
A $1 test transfer beats a misrouted five-figure withdrawal that lands on the wrong network or a contract that does not support the rollup deposit flow. For longer-term price scenarios that account for L2 rotation and Loopring DEX volume, see our Loopring price forecast.
Risks of holding Loopring
The interesting part of the LRC risk profile is not volatility. It is that the project is fighting a slow squeeze inside its own category. Mindshare in zk-rollups has shifted to newer entrants, the GameStop wind-down took out a meaningful chunk of the demand story, and the gap between the Loopring narrative and the actual revenue running through the rollup has widened. Several specific items stack on top.
- Declining mindshare in the zk-rollup category. Loopring shipped early, and that early-mover position has not held up against newer zk-rollups that picked up developer mindshare and DeFi liquidity through 2023 and 2024. The category has consolidated around a different set of venues.
- GameStop wind-down. The NFT marketplace ended in 2024, and a real piece of the LRC demand story went with it. Sentiment around the partnership still drives outsized price moves in either direction, which is not a healthy place for a token to sit years after the original deal.
- Narrative-vs-revenue gap. Loopring is described as a major zk-rollup in industry coverage, but the actual fee revenue running through the rollup is a fraction of what the larger zk-rollups process. Holders should look at on-chain Loopring DEX volume, not generic L2 ecosystem charts, before sizing a position.
- Listing thinning. Some smaller exchanges have quietly delisted LRC in 2024 and 2025 as volume dried up on those venues. Major exchanges still list it, but the market depth picture is narrower than it was during the 2021 peak, which can amplify slippage on size.
- Zk-rollup competition. ZKsync, Linea, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, and Starknet all chase overlapping use cases with deeper developer ecosystems. Loopring has to defend its lane on trading and payments specifically, rather than competing on general-purpose smart contract throughput.
- Centralization caveats. The Loopring operator and prover are centralized today. Decentralizing those roles is on the roadmap and has not shipped at scale, which is the standard caveat for every major rollup in production but worth knowing before sizing a long-term LRC position.
- Drawdown. LRC is more than 95% off its November 2021 ATH near $3.83. Position sizes should assume a similar drawdown is possible again from any new local high.
This page is information, not financial advice. Talk to someone licensed before allocating real capital.
Loopring's all-time high of $3.75 was set on November 10, 2021. The current price sits +99.67% below that peak. Distance from the all-time high is a common reference point when evaluating long recoveries and macro support or resistance.
Buying Loopring (LRC) is a five-step routine once you have picked the right venue and pair. The steps below mirror what most investors do today.
Whether Loopring is a good investment depends on your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for volatility. Like all cryptocurrencies, LRC carries real market risk: prices can rise or fall sharply in a day, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns.
This page provides data and analysis for educational purposes only. It is not financial advice. Always do your own research, diversify, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
