Loopring, one of the most popular decentralized exchanges, has expanded its trading options with the addition of three wrapped Bitcoin pools on Layer 2.
In a tweet declaring that the exchange has had no Bitcoin trading pairs for so long, Loopring announced the launch of four new pools for wrapped BTC on Layer 2.
Traders on the DEX now have access to wrapped Bitcoin, three stablecoins (DAI, USDC, and USDT), automated market maker pools, and order book pairs.
The total amount of Bitcoin tokenized on Ethereum for use in DeFi is a little under 171,000 BTC. This is worth an estimated $8 billion at current prices. Of that total, roughly 72% is wBTC according to BTConEthereum.
Layer 2 Usage Surging
Loopring, which launched gas-free L2-to-L1 transfers in mid-January, uses zk-rollups on Ethereum to provide high-speed, low-cost transactions. Its throughput is as high as 2,000 trades per second, without sacrificing any Layer 1 security.
The Layer 2 scaling technology batches or “rolls up” transactions to process them off the main chain but secures them via the “zero-knowledge” proof. These and other rollup solutions such as Optimistic have become increasingly popular as Layer 1 Ethereum struggles under heavy load and gas prices.
Noting a fall in gas fees, Loopring suggested that it may be a good time to move some ETH onto the Layer 2 DEX in anticipation of the next spike.
Gas prices have actually calmed down over the week and have returned to some state of normality with the average transaction now costing $11.50 according to BitInfoCharts. This is still higher than it should be but is a vast improvement on the $50 transactions that traders were paying in gas last week.
Industry analyst and Ethereum advocate, Anthony Sassano, recommended a few actions while gas prices are relatively low;
L2 is becoming one of the top choices for protocols wanting to offer savings to their users. Derivatives exchange dYdX switched to Layer 2 on Feb. 24 using StarkWare to power its platform with zk-rollups.
LRC Price Outlook
Loopring’s native LRC token is up around 1.5% on the day to reach $0.53. It has been hit hard in the crypto market correction however, dropping over 30% in the past seven days.
LRC hit an all-time high of around $2.50 during the previous crypto market cycle in January 2018. Its most recent high was $0.86 on Feb. 13.
The DEX is currently running liquidity mining incentives to farm LRC in 14-day cycles.
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