South Korea’s largest crypto exchange Upbit launches Ethereum L2

South Korean crypto speech Upbit has announced the motorboat of Ethereum layer-2 Giwa connected testnet — a determination that could spot it grow past its relation arsenic a crypto exchange.

Upbit — South Korea’s largest crypto speech by trading measurement — confirmed the quality astatine the Upbit D Conference 2025 connected Monday. 

Giwa (short for Global Infrastructure for Web3 Access) volition leverage the Optimism Foundation’s OP Stack to execute one-second artifact times portion inheriting Ethereum’s information to settee transactions, according to Giwa’s documentation. 

The extremity of Giwa is to marque Web3 infrastructure “easy and amusive for everyone,” it said successful the Korean-translated document. 

Other exchanges that person launched their ain blockchains see Coinbase, which launched Base successful August 2023 and Binance’s BNB Chain, which was created successful 2019. Both let developers to physique apps connected their respective layer-2 blockchains.

Google, Stripe and Sony Group person besides launched a concatenation oregon announced an volition to bash truthful successful 2025. 

While it didn’t authorities erstwhile a Giwa mainnet would launch, improvement tools are built into Giwa’s testnet — Giwa Sepolia — enabling the migration of Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible contracts, portion a artifact explorer tracking testnet enactment is already up and running.

Source: Cointelegraph

According to the Giwa documentation, Upbit’s blockchain volition physique blocks each 2nd to present near-real-time transactions.

Giwa was besides designed for flexibility, enabling customization arsenic the Optimism Foundation’s open-source tech stack continues to evolve.

Giwa has been successful the works for astatine slightest a fewer weeks

The improvement of GIWA has been successful the works for astatine slightest 3 weeks, its GitHub account shows.

However, with implicit 4 cardinal blocks added to Giwa Sepolia, a one-second artifact clip complaint suggests the concatenation whitethorn person launched earlier. 

Key transaction enactment metrics from the Giwa Sepolia testnet. Source: Giwa Sepolia

The word Giwa appears to beryllium derived from curved tiles seen connected the roofs of palaces, temples, and accepted hanok houses successful South Korea that are typically made from baked clay and symbolize practice and protection.

South Korea has been a starring crypto marketplace successful 2025

Upbit accounts for astir 73% of South Korean crypto trading and has seen the 20th largest trading measurement among crypto exchanges successful the past 24 hours astatine $2.5 billion, CoinGecko data shows. Its precocious ranking comes contempt being mostly confined to the South Korean market.

Related: South Korea caps crypto lending rates astatine 20%, bans leveraged loans

The Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index, published past Wednesday, showed South Korea recorded the 2nd largest on-ramp crypto measurement betwixt July 2024 and June 2025 astatine $1 trillion — trailing lone the US astatine $4.2 trillion.

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