On September 25, Naver Financial announced a comprehensive share swap with Upbit's parent company, Dunamu, planning to exchange newly issued shares for the shares held by Dunamu's shareholders, ultimately achieving full ownership of Dunamu. Following the announcement, Naver's stock price surged rapidly, breaking through key resistance levels, with an intraday peak increase of up to 16%.
Why was this share swap able to boost the stock price so significantly? It may stem from Naver's far-reaching layout in the Web 3 field.
From Payments to Crypto: Naver Financial's Transformation Journey
As the fintech subsidiary of South Korean internet giant Naver, Naver Financial was established in 2017, primarily responsible for operating payment services like Naver Pay. However, Naver's vision did not stop at traditional fintech. As early as 2021, Naver demonstrated a strong interest in the cryptocurrency sector, attempting to acquire the mainstream South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb. Although this attempt ultimately did not succeed, it revealed its ambitions for digital assets.
In 2022, Naver further ventured into the NFT and metaverse fields, even investing approximately 100 billion KRW (about 78.4 million USD) into the TVT No. 3 venture fund, which focuses on Web 3, SaaS, and B2C platforms. This series of actions clearly outlines Naver's strategic trajectory from traditional internet to Web 3 transformation.
Fast forward to July 2025, Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit, confirmed its collaboration with Naver Pay to advance the Korean won stablecoin payment business. This project is led by Naver Pay, with Dunamu assisting, and plans to clarify cooperation details further after relevant regulations are established. Meanwhile, Naver Financial also acquired shares in Dunamu's unlisted stock trading platform, Stockplus Unlisted, becoming its largest shareholder, which can be seen as a prelude to the share swap transaction between Dunamu and Naver.
This transaction will help Naver accelerate its entry into the stablecoin and digital asset payment sectors, also fulfilling its unachieved wish from the 2021 Bithumb exchange attempt. From an industry perspective, this is also a milestone merger in South Korea's technology and cryptocurrency sectors, marking the acceleration of traditional internet companies into digital finance and promoting the transformation of traditional payments towards Web 3.
The Birth of the GIWA Chain: Upbit's Layer 2 Ambition
As the parent company of South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, Dunamu not only leads the Korean crypto trading market but also ranks among the top globally, possessing strong technological accumulation and market influence. Recently, Upbit has introduced a new narrative chip—GIWA Chain.
GIWA is built on the OP Stack, positioned as an Ethereum Layer 2, claiming to support 1-second block times and full EVM compatibility, allowing developers to directly migrate Solidity contracts and reuse Ethereum development tools. On the surface, this is a technical exploration aimed at lowering the barriers to Web 3 usage; but at a deeper level, Upbit hopes to regain control over ecological narratives and value capture through its self-built chain.
However, Upbit's move seems to have come a bit late. Looking globally, self-built chains by exchanges have become an industry trend. Binance's BNB Chain has long been a leading player in the crypto industry, and recently, the perpetual trading DEX Aster on the chain skyrocketed 60 times, igniting the entire Perp DEX sector and even pushing the exchange's native token BNB past the 1,000 KRW mark; Coinbase's Base chain, launched a year ago, has also developed rapidly, even incubating major projects like PENGU.
Ultimately, if centralized exchanges rely solely on transaction fees, their revenue ceiling is too obvious; once they have their own chains, they can enter a longer-term, more imaginative growth curve through ecological project incubation, native token empowerment, and value accumulation of on-chain applications.
Of course, the key to this share swap transaction lies not only in Upbit but also in Naver's own payment network.
Naver Pay has over 30 million users, and Naver Shopping's transaction scale reaches as high as 50 trillion KRW. If Naver issues stablecoins centered around the GIWA Chain and introduces stablecoins into this large-scale payment ecosystem, the two companies are expected to generate significant synergies.
Conclusion
From Naver Pay's payment services to Dunamu's exchange and blockchain technology, and to GIWA Chain's Layer 2 exploration, Naver is constructing a closed-loop strategy that spans payments, stablecoins, and public chains. This share swap is not only a transaction at the capital level but also an accelerator for strategic transformation.
Against the backdrop of South Korea's gradually opening policies on digital assets, Naver undoubtedly holds the advantage. However, challenges still exist. Can the GIWA Chain stand out in the Layer 2 race? Will Naver's ecological integration be successfully implemented? The answers to these questions will need to await the test of time.
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