South Korean crypto exchange Upbit has announced the launch of Ethereum layer-2 Giwa on testnet — a move that could see it expand past its role as a crypto exchange.
Upbit, South Korea’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, confirmed the news at the Upbit D Conference 2025 on Monday.
Giwa (short for Global Infrastructure for Web3 Access) will leverage the Optimism Foundation’s OP Stack to achieve one-second block times while inheriting Ethereum’s security to settle transactions, according to Giwa’s documentation.
The goal of Giwa is to make Web3 infrastructure “easy and fun for everyone,” it said in the Korean-translated document.
Other exchanges that have launched their own blockchains include Coinbase, which launched Base in August 2023, and Binance, which created BNB Chain in 2019. Both allow developers to build apps on their respective layer-2 blockchains.
Google, Stripe and Sony Group have also launched a chain or announced an intention to do so in 2025.
While it didn’t state when a Giwa mainnet would launch, development tools are built into Giwa’s testnet — Giwa Sepolia — enabling the migration of Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible contracts, while a block explorer tracking testnet activity is already up and running.
According to the Giwa documentation, Upbit’s blockchain will build blocks every second to deliver near-real-time transactions.
Giwa was also designed for flexibility, enabling customization as the Optimism Foundation’s open-source tech stack continues to evolve.
Giwa has been in the works for at least a few weeks
The development of GIWA has been in the works for at least three weeks, its GitHub account shows.
However, with over 4 million blocks added to Giwa Sepolia, a one-second block time rate suggests the chain may have launched earlier.
The term Giwa appears to be derived from curved tiles seen on the roofs of palaces, temples, and traditional hanok houses in South Korea that are typically made from baked clay and symbolize heritage and protection.
South Korea has been a leading crypto market in 2025
Upbit accounts for around 73% of South Korean crypto trading and has seen the 20th largest trading volume among crypto exchanges in the last 24 hours at $2.5 billion, CoinGecko data shows. Its high ranking comes despite being largely confined to the South Korean market.
Related: South Korea caps crypto lending rates at 20%, bans leveraged loans
The Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index, published last Wednesday, showed South Korea recorded the second largest on-ramp crypto volume between July 2024 and June 2025 at $1 trillion — trailing only the US at $4.2 trillion.
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