South Korean crypto change Upbit has introduced the launch of Ethereum layer-2 Giwa on testnet — a transfer that might see it increase previous its function as a crypto change.
Upbit, South Korea’s largest crypto change by buying and selling quantity, confirmed the information on the Upbit D Conference 2025 on Monday.
Giwa (quick for Global Infrastructure for Web3 Access) will leverage the Optimism Foundation’s OP Stack to attain one-second block occasions whereas inheriting Ethereum’s safety to settle transactions, in accordance to Giwa’s documentation.
The objective of Giwa is to make Web3 infrastructure “straightforward and enjoyable for everybody,” it stated within the Korean-translated doc.
Other exchanges which have launched their very own blockchains embrace Coinbase, which launched Base in August 2023, and Binance, which created BNB Chain in 2019. Both permit builders to construct apps on their respective layer-2 blockchains.
Google, Stripe and Sony Group have additionally launched a sequence or introduced an intention to take action in 2025.
While it didn’t state when a Giwa mainnet would launch, growth instruments are constructed into Giwa’s testnet — Giwa Sepolia — enabling the migration of Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible contracts, whereas a block explorer monitoring testnet exercise is already up and working.
According to the Giwa documentation, Upbit’s blockchain will construct blocks each second to ship near-real-time transactions.
Giwa was additionally designed for flexibility, enabling customization because the Optimism Foundation’s open-source tech stack continues to evolve.
Giwa has been within the works for at the least a couple of weeks
The growth of GIWA has been within the works for at the least three weeks, its GitHub account exhibits.
However, with over 4 million blocks added to Giwa Sepolia, a one-second block time price suggests the chain might have launched earlier.
The time period Giwa seems to be derived from curved tiles seen on the roofs of palaces, temples, and conventional hanok homes in South Korea which can be sometimes produced from baked clay and symbolize heritage and safety.
South Korea has been a number one crypto market in 2025
Upbit accounts for round 73% of South Korean crypto buying and selling and has seen the twentieth largest buying and selling quantity amongst crypto exchanges within the final 24 hours at $2.5 billion, CoinGecko knowledge exhibits. Its excessive rating comes regardless of being largely confined to the South Korean market.
Related: South Korea caps crypto lending charges at 20%, bans leveraged loans
The Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index, revealed final Wednesday, confirmed South Korea recorded the second largest on-ramp crypto quantity between July 2024 and June 2025 at $1 trillion — trailing solely the US at $4.2 trillion.
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