South Korea | Upbit launches its own Ethereum L2 "Giwa", stepping into the infrastructure war from the exchange.

At its annual conference, the Upbit Exchange launched Giwa, a Layer-2 testnet built on OP Stack, demonstrating its strategic intent to move from the exchange to infrastructure. (Synopsis: Global retail bellwether? South Korean retail investors “change face” to abandon Tesla and embrace cryptocurrencies) (Background supplement: South Korea's crypto market volume and price burst! Upbit trading volume breaks $10 billion, popular tokens double in a single day) South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit announced the launch of the Ethereum Layer-2 testnet Giwa today (9) at the annual Upbit D Conference 2025. It symbolizes that Upbit has further moved from the role of “deal-making” to “infrastructure provider”, attracting industry attention. Upbit moves from exchange to infrastructure Upbit currently accounts for about 73% of the South Korean cryptocurrency market, and the sheer number of users and funding may give the new chain a liquidity advantage as soon as it is launched. The platform's name, Giwa, is derived from the hanok tile, symbolizing construction and protection, and also emphasizes Upbit's connection with local culture. The launch site invited politicians, businessmen and technical figures from many countries to attend, and even the son of US President Eric Trump appeared, highlighting South Korea's visibility in global crypto discussions. OP Stack and “One Second Block Time” In terms of technology, Giwa adopts the Optimism OP Stack modular framework, emphasizing “one second block time”. The Ethereum mainnet currently produces blocks in about 13 seconds, while most Layer-2 batches are committed at intervals between 2 and 5 seconds; Giwa wants to further reduce the confirmation time to a smoother experience for decentralized applications that require fast interaction. Official documents indicate that full block finality currently takes 13 to 19 minutes. According to official documentation and the GitHub page, the Giwa Sepolia testnet has processed more than 4 million blocks so far, and natively supports EVM smart contracts, making it easy for existing developers to migrate painlessly. At the same time, Upbit plans to provide a dedicated wallet and stablecoins pegged to the Korean won, allowing traditional investors to directly enter Web3 with familiar denominations. South Korean market drives Web3 traffic According to the Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index, South Korean on-chain inflows reached $1 trillion between July 2024 and June 2025, second only to the United States. Strong demand and compliance environment make Upbit have dual leverage of policy and industry in China. But despite the ample start, Giwa still has to face the reality of multiple Layer-2 chains competing for liquidity and developers. For example, Binance BNB Chain and Coinbase Base have invested huge resources. Whether it can attract flagship applications in key scenarios such as games and DeFi in the future will determine the survival of Giwa. In addition, the chain is dominated by centralized exchanges, which also arouses community attention to governance transparency. Although Upbit promises to adopt open source and multi-signature mechanisms, the actual node distribution, upgrade process and rate policy still need time to verify. Liquidity bridges and cross-chain interoperability are also technical pain points, and once the security design is insufficient, it may repeat the past cases of cross-chain bridges being attacked. However, if Upbit can take advantage of its own user volume and mirror won assets to provide a simplified path of “opening an account and going on the chain”, the ultimate success or failure may depend on whether ordinary users do not feel the complexity of the chain. As Upbit mentioned in the briefing: “The value of Giwa is to make blockchain as natural as mobile payments.” The launch of the Giwa testnet marks Upbit's official participation in the “platform chain building” competition. In the following months, the launch schedule of the mainnet, the progress of the issuance of native stablecoins, and the launch status of the first flagship DApps are all the focus of external observation. For the global Web3 industry, whether Giwa can run a moat in a strong local market will also provide a new model for exchanges and ecological complementarity. Related reports South Korea's four major banks will meet with Tether and Circle executives this week: discuss the issuance and application of USD/KRW stablecoins “Squid Game 2” new character “Coin Speculation” raises the topic: Why does South Korea hate people in the currency circle so much? Bank of Korea: More than 30% of the people are speculating in coins! The number of local cryptocurrency investor users exceeded 15.59 million (South Korea|Upbit launched its own Ethereum L2 “Giwa”, from the exchange to the infrastructure war) This article was first published in BlockTempo's “Dynamic Trend - The Most Influential Blockchain News Media”.