South Korea's Upbit Unveils Ethereum Layer-2 “Giwa” Testnet

Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has just launched its Ethereum Layer-2 network called Giwa. The announcement about Giwa was made during the Upbit D Conference 2025 on 8^th September, 2025. This is a strategic attempt by the exchange to expand its services beyond trading. Giwa is already live on testnet.

Upbit Launches Giwa on Testnet

According to official documentation, Giwa (short for Global Infrastructure for Web3 Access) is powered by the Optimism Foundation’s OP Stack. The new chain targets one-second block times while leveraging Ethereum’s security to finalize transactions. Developers can already access Giwa Sepolia, the testnet environment, which supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, migration of smart contracts, and features a dedicated block explorer to monitor activity.

The network has already worked on more than four million blocks, which means that work on the project started weeks before it was made public. GitHub logs show that work has been going on for at least three weeks, but Giwa's quick block production suggests that testing was done inside the company before that.

Upbit joins a growing list of major exchanges and corporations building their own blockchains. Base was launched in 2023 by Coinbase, whereas BNB Chain by Binance has been active since 2019. Global firms such as Stripe, Sony, and Google have announced or deployed their blockchain initiatives in 2025.

Upbit’s design emphasizes flexibility and customization, ensuring the network can evolve alongside improvements to Optimism’s open-source stack. It is South Korea’s dominant exchange, responsible for about 73% of national crypto trading volume. In the past 24 hours, it processed $2.5 billion in trades, ranking 20th globally, according to CoinGecko.

The Chainalysis 2025 Global Adoption Index ranks the country second worldwide for crypto on-ramp volume at $1 trillion between July 2024 and June 2025, trailing only the United States.