South Korea’s largest crypto exchange Upbit launches Ethereum blockchain with Optimism Foundation support

South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit, has partnered with Optimism to build a new Ethereum Layer 2 using the OP tech stack.

Optimism is perhaps the go-to solution for institutions looking to launch a dedicated blockchain, having served centralized and decentralized exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Uniswap, crypto projects like World and Zora, and even multinational conglomerate Sony in their efforts.

Notably, the so-called GIWA Chain will be the first chain to launch on the Self-Managed tier of OP Enterprise, meaning Upbit will run the chain itself while the Optimism Foundation provides tech support, according to an announcement on Monday. 

“What we hear consistently from the largest exchanges and institutional operators is that they want to own the chain their users transact on, not rent it,” Jing Wang, Optimism Foundation director, said in the release.

Some of the nearly three dozen chains launched using the OP Stack are “fully managed,” with the Optimism Foundation running the chain’s primary sequencer, controlling the chain’s configuration, and holding operational authority.

A sequencer is a core component of a rollup that sequences how transactions are added into a block. In addition to determining what transactions are included or denied, which may matter for compliance reasons, it is also a revenue generator by capturing the fees users generate.

“Self-Managed is built for operators who can’t cede operational control. For a regulated exchange serving Korean and global institutional users, giving up sequencer control over Upbit’s chain was never going to be acceptable,” Optimism wrote in a blog.

Upbit claims to serve upwards of 13 million registered users and has ranked as high as No. 2 globally by cumulative spot trading volume, according to CoinGecko. “At that size, the math stops working for renting someone else’s infrastructure,” Optimism noted.

According to the announcement, GIWA Chain is currently live on testnet.

The firms signed a memorandum of understanding for Optimism to provide a “safety net” for Upbit, essentially equating to an institutional-grade backup including monitoring, a failover sequencer, priority patches, and guidance, according to the announcement.

“Taking on the full weight of chain resilience alone, running the single instance of sequencer infrastructure that millions of users depend on, is a burden few single-operator chains can credibly sustain,” the blog reads.

While Optimism’s “Self Managed” tier appears to be new, it’s worth clarifying that many chains launched using the OP Stack, like Base, Ink and Unichain have always used sequencers controlled by the chain operator rather than Optimism. 

Many of the OP Stack chains are part of the so-called Superchain, where independent networks share interoperability, infrastructure, and governance features, and pay a small percentage of their sequencer revenue to the Optimism Collective, but are operationally distinct.

Earlier this year, Base, the blockchain initially built by Coinbase using the OP Stack, announced it would migrate to its own unified in-house stack.

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