Loopring pulls the plug on its DEX — first zk-rollup in, first zk-rollup out 🪦

Loopring, the protocol that launched Ethereum's first zero-knowledge rollup, said Sunday it is shutting down its decentralized exchange and automated market maker, ending all trading and halting its relayer with immediate effect. The team posted on X that the closure was driven by a failure to gain meaningful adoption, a lack of business development skills and the rise of more capable zkEVM successors. "To be honest, Loopring never gained meaningful adoption," the team wrote. "As the first zk-rollup, we lacked a virtual machine – no composability, no real‑world payment use cases. That limitation kept our ecosystem from growing."

Loopring raised $45 million in a 2017 initial coin offering and helped prove that scaling Ethereum via zk-rollups was viable, but the team said it was ultimately outflanked by modern zkEVM networks such as zkSync, Scroll and StarkNet that are fully compatible with $ETH smart contracts. The group described itself as "engineers at heart" who excelled at writing code but never developed the "passion or skills for business development." External pressure intensified in 2026 when major exchanges delisted LRC, the team said, accelerating the decision to close rather than run a "hollow service." Loopring had already shut down its wallet services in July 2025, citing scaling challenges.

On-chain data from L2Beat shows Loopring's total value locked is about $8 million, down almost 99% from a $760 million peak in November 2021. Its native token, LRC, has fallen to $0.01 from an all-time high of $3.75 in the same month. The protocol's TVL, transaction volume, daily active addresses and DEX activity had all declined steadily in the years before the June 28 shutdown. One of Loopring's highest-profile milestones was a 2021 partnership with GameStop to power its NFT marketplace, which launched the following year.

The team said it will calculate and publish all final user balances, then distribute funds directly to users' Ethereum wallets in batches, covering gas fees for the transfers. Loopring's closure adds to a wave of crypto project shutdowns in 2026, with more than 60 protocols winding down services this year according to RootData. Other notable casualties cited by the data provider include a16z-backed self-custody solution Entropy, app-chain infrastructure protocol Syndicate Labs and AI blockchain platform Yupp, as the bear market and shifting narratives continue to reshape the industry.