Key Takeaways:
- Loopring DEX halted all trading and took its relayer offline on June 28
- TVL fell to $8M from a $760M peak in November 2021, per L2Beat
- LRC token trades at $0.01, down 99.7% from its all-time high of $3.75
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Loopring shuts down DEX after TVL collapses 99% to $8M
Ethereum's first zero-knowledge rollup, Loopring, shut down its decentralized exchange and automated market maker June 28, ending all trading services and halting its relayer effective immediately.
"To be honest, Loopring never gained meaningful adoption," the team said in a post on X. "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."
The protocol's total value locked stands at about $8 million, down almost 99% from the $760 million peak in November 2021, according to L2Beat. Its native token, LRC, has collapsed to $0.01 from its all-time high of $3.75 in the same month. The team cited three reasons for the closure: failure to gain meaningful adoption, a lack of business development skills, and being technologically surpassed by modern zkEVM solutions such as zkSync, Scroll and StarkNet. Major exchange delistings of LRC in 2026 accelerated the decline, the team said.
Loopring raised $45 million in a 2017 initial coin offering and helped prove that scaling Ethereum via zk-rollups was viable, but its non-EVM architecture left it unable to compete with newer, fully compatible successors. The closure adds to more than 60 crypto projects that have shuttered services in 2026, according to RootData, as the bear market deepens and previous-cycle narratives no longer apply. Notable casualties include a16z-backed decentralized self-custody solution Entropy, app-chain infrastructure protocol Syndicate and AI blockchain platform Yupp.
Loopring said it will calculate and publish final user balances, then distribute funds directly to users' Ethereum wallets in batches while covering all gas fees. The shutdown follows the closure of its wallet services in July 2025, which the team attributed to scaling challenges. One of its biggest milestones — a 2021 partnership with GameStop to power its NFT platform — now stands as a relic of a previous market cycle that the protocol could not outlast.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
[1] Loopring DEX Shuts Down After Failing to Find Adoption[2] Pioneering zk-rollup Loopring closes DEX, citing lack of adoption[3] Loopring to Shut Down DEX Service, Relayer - bloomingbit[4] Loopring shuts down Loopring DEX and returns user assets - Bitget[5] Crypto Daily Market Report – June 29, 2026 - KuCoin
