Loopring is an open protocol for building decentralized exchanges. Loopring has quickly gained visibility as one of the decentralized exchange options that’s making progress on trading across multiple blockchains. Loopring’s solution utilizes ring transactions and order matching to facilitate asset exchanges. Essentially, it aggregates the order books of other exchanges. This allows any exchange, decentralized or centralized, to utilize Loopring’s protocol to match orders. Part of providing an open protocol is remaining blockchain agnostic. Hence, the first Loopring token (LRC) was launched on Ethereum, but it also plans to launch Loopring NEO (LRN) and Loopring QTUM (LRQ). The plans to launch Loopring NEO are coming along. The distribution of the new tokens, LRN, has already begun. Essentially, the token distribution involves two phases: an investor sale and an airdrop. This guide will look at both phases, how to buy LRN, and what to expect from Loopring NEO. The big selling point of Loopring’s exchange solution is you never have to deposit funds to Loopring. With most exchanges, even other decentralized exchanges, you still have to transfer funds to their wallets. On Loopring, you can keep your funds in your own private wallet when trading. Of course, that creates a challenge for Loopring because the exchange no longer controls the wallet and that means smart contracts need to do the work of verifying that transactions are legitimate and confirmed. When a trade occurs, it happens user to user, with no middleman. Loopring finds the match and coordinates the terms of the trade, but it never controls the assets. Loopring is one of the first projects to attempt launching across multiple blockchain ecosystems. This experiment is interesting and exciting. It also has the potential to be lucrative if Loopring continues to increase in value.
Steem is a cryptocurrency that rewards users for community building by posting and upvoting valuable content for others. Steem was inspired from the success of Reddit where the community helped enrich the shareholders. Steem aims to help distribute the rewards to the community members who help create the community in the first place. Steem aims to provide various services to its members such as a source of curated news, Q&A, job boards etc. The founders of Steem came from BitShares with Dan Larimer involved as well. Steem’s main platform, called Steemit, is a social media network built on top of the Steem blockchain. Steemit is similar to popular content-driven social networks like Reddit and Medium, but it rewards users with cryptocurrency for their participation. Fundamentally, the more value a particular piece of content provides to a greater number of people, the more the individuals responsible for creating and curating that content can earn. Users cast votes, creating a hierarchy of content. The more upvotes a post gets, the more it will earn. The platform also allows for downvotes, giving participants more flexibility when it comes to rating content. Steemit is meritocratic, meaning users that hold more currency can cast votes with greater influence. The Steemit community even has another service to offer to its customers. D.tube, which is considered to be very similar to YouTube, is Blockchain based and the users can realize the difference between the traditional video publishing websites and D.tube, as the amount of money earned is also displayed beside the post apart from likes shares and comments. The Steemit community is accused of posting plagiarize contents on their publishing website. The irony seems to be reaching highest levels when the original content doesn’t receive much appreciation and income than the copied versions of it.'