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About GIWA
GIWA is an Ethereum layer 2 built on the OP Stack by Dunamu, the parent of Upbit, using ETH for fees with one-second blocks and a 60 million gas limit, compatible with EVM tooling so Solidity contracts deploy directly; the design routes fee payment through a Paymaster so users can pay in stablecoins, and brings exchange balances and self-custody wallets into one view. It targets the friction Korean users meet in on-chain apps around fees and address management: transactions are ordered on the L2, batched and submitted to Ethereum for settlement, while fiat and stablecoin conversion runs through licensed channels.
Among exchange-backed chains it sits close to Base and BNB Chain, differentiated by issuing no token of its own, handing sequencing to Upbit and joining the self-managed tier of Optimism's OP Enterprise; in May 2026 the two signed a memorandum making GIWA the first chain under that tier. Ordering and block production rest with a single party, and in September a counterfeit network reusing its chain ID 9134 drained about 766 ETH through a fake bridge.
In September 2025, the GIWA testnet (Giwa Sepolia) launched, built on the with one-second block times, aiming to provide fast, low-cost Ethereum Layer 2 infrastructure.
In April 2026, the team announced the migration of the execution client from op-geth to op-reth, following the OP Stack ecosystem's transition, with plans to move to kona-client at the Karst hardfork, ensuring long-term node support.
In 2026 GIWA, the Ethereum layer two built by Upbit's parent Dunamu, took an unusual path: its biggest story of the year was not launching. In May Dunamu signed a memorandum with the Optimism Foundation making GIWA the first chain on the self-managed tier of OP Enterprise, with Upbit running the primary sequencer. The roadmap had put a private mainnet in August or September, yet as of October the documentation still marks mainnet as under development, with only the Giwa Sepolia testnet public, running one-second blocks on OP Stack and standard Ethereum tooling.
On 27 September an impersonation turned that absence into exposure. Scammers stood up a fake chain using the real Chain ID 9134, complete with a counterfeit bridge and batcher that posted batches to Ethereum for real; 1,335 addresses bridged about 767.65 ETH and roughly 766.25 ETH was drained. The affected app DYOR Swap partly compensated victims from its own treasury. GIWA clarified the same day that no mainnet had ever launched, so no mainnet RPC could have leaked, and told users to trust official channels only. On 22 October Upbit issued another notice confirming testnet-only status with no mainnet date, warning that fake claims about a launch and a token sale were being used to induce transfers. By design there is no native token, gas is paid in ETH, and stablecoin fees are planned through a Paymaster; GIWA Wallet and the stablecoin products still carry a coming-soon label.
GIWA ships mainnet together with the wallet and stablecoin payment products, then connects Upbit's liquidity and users onchain, using Verified Tokens, Web3 names and a builder programme to create recognisable ecosystem markers. For an exchange-led chain, anti-impersonation and anti-phishing are not extras but preconditions for launch.
Oh Kyung-seok — CEO of Dunamu; announced GIWA Chain in the UDC 2025 keynote.
Minseok Jung — COO of Dunamu; oversees GIWA's performance and compliance standards for institutional and retail users.