- Loopring took its DEX, AMM, and relayer offline immediately on June 28.
- Team cites thin adoption, no EVM and zkEVM rivals for the shutdown.
- Balances above $10 go straight to users' L1 wallets, with gas covered.
- LRC Token trades near $0.012, down about 99% from its 2021 peak.
Loopring, one of the first projects to bring a zero-knowledge rollup to Ethereum, has shut down the exchange that built its reputation. The team confirmed on June 28 that its decentralized exchange and automated market maker stopped trading immediately, with the relayer that processed orders taken offline the same day.
There was no wind-down window: trading is already over, and returning user funds is the only task left.
Loopring Couldn’t Keep Up With zkEVM Rivals
The closure ends a run that began in 2017, when Loopring set out to show that zk-proofs could scale Ethereum at low cost. The team admitted the project never found lasting demand.
Built before general-purpose virtual machines were practical, it lacked composability and real-world payment use cases, which kept the ecosystem small. Weak business development and a string of LRC token delistings across major exchanges in 2026 added pressure.
Meanwhile, the sharper problem was technical: modern zkEVM networks now run Ethereum smart contracts directly, leaving Loopring’s specialized, non-EVM architecture looking dated. Describing themselves as engineers rather than operators, the founders said they preferred a clean exit to a service with limited use. They had already retired the project’s smart wallet and a set of DeFi products, including Dual Investment and Portal, by 2025.
What LRC Holders Get Back, and What’s Next
Loopring is bypassing its original self-custody, Merkle-proof exit, and managing the payout itself. It will publish a full list of final Layer-2 balances, convert AMM positions into their underlying tokens, and send assets in batches to each user’s linked Ethereum address.
Only balances worth at least $10 qualify, and the team claims to cover gas costs. A two-week review window lets users flag discrepancies before distribution begins. Loopring conceded that the method is more centralized than its initial design.
Markets treated the announcement as a verdict. LRC token slipped about 4% to near $0.012, trading below its short-term moving averages and roughly 99% beneath its 2021 high, when the token carried a multibillion-dollar valuation. With its main utility now gone, the upcoming fund distribution is the next likely source of selling pressure.
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