Walrus, Nillion, RedStone Step In — Can They Spark a Turnaround?

INFCL

31 Mar 2025 • 7 min read

Recently, several new coins have been listed on major Korean exchanges. Upbit listed Walrus (WAL), while Bithumb listed Redstone (RED), Nillion (NIL), Walrus (WAL), and Orca (ORCA). The listing dates are as follows: on March 25, Bithumb listed Redstone (RED) and Nillion (NIL), and on March 27, Walrus (WAL) was listed. Finally, on March 28, both Upbit and Bithumb listed Walrus (WAL) and Orca (ORCA).

Walrus(WAL) gained strong momentum by riding the rising interest in Sui, leveraging both scarcity-driven testnet participation and active KOL engagement. Nillion(NIL) stood out by aligning with the 2024 AI narrative, backed by strong investor interest and real-world builder support. Meanwhile, RedStone(RED) sparked curiosity through its surprise Binance Launchpool appearance, though some confusion still lingers due to limited local visibility.

Regarding weekly trading volumes, Upbit and Bithumb saw a decrease of around 13%, totaling approximately 31 billion KRW, reflecting a slowdown in trading activity. These two exchanges dominate the Korean market, holding around 95% market share. XRP and USDT lead the trading volumes, while the overall market has entered a bearish phase, causing a drop in trading activity. If Bitcoin does not bounce back above $85,000 soon, the market sentiment may remain weak.

2. Exchanges

2-1. Newly Listed Coins

Last week, major Korean exchanges introduced several new listings:

Upbit listed Walrus (WAL)
Bithumb listed Redstone (RED), Nillion (NIL), Walrus (WAL) and Orca (ORCA)

Date	Upbit	Bithumb
3/24 (Mon)
3/25 (Tue)		RedStone (RED)
Nillion (NIL)
3/26 (Wed)
3/27 (Thu)		Walrus (WAL)
3/28 (Fri)	Walrus (WAL)	Orca (ORCA)

Key Marketing Strategies & Takeaways

🔹 Walrus (WAL)

Walrus, built on Sui, launched at the perfect time — right as Korean interest in the Sui ecosystem was heating up. Early on, several KOL channels organically introduced Walrus, sharing airdrop guides and onboarding the local community.

As Sui’s price continued to climb, attention on Sui-based protocols surged, and Walrus’s testnet became extremely popular — so much so that test tokens became hard to get. Walrus turned this challenge into an opportunity by launching a test token giveaway campaign through its official Korean community and KOLs, drawing in even more users.

Rather than just focusing on staking, KOLs encouraged users to explore different dApps within the ecosystem, further boosting testnet activity.

Just before TGE, Walrus announced it had raised $140M at a $2B valuation, sending bullish signals across the community.

🔹 Nillion (NIL)

As the AI narrative dominated in 2024, Nillion entered the scene with a unique angle: blind computation, a privacy-preserving tech essential for real-world AI use cases. While early Web3 users quietly picked up on its potential, the project made a stronger impact in Korea after announcing a $25M raise led by Hack VC in October 2024.

Following that, KOL activity exploded, with Telegram channels sharing explainers, investment details, and use cases. Nillion also positioned itself as more than just Web3, highlighting partnerships with Web2 companies to broaden its appeal.

Fun fact: many Korean KOLs learned about Nillion’s free local transportation at Devcon Bangkok and ETH Denver, which earned the project a lot of goodwill for actually helping builders on the ground.

🔹 RedStone (RED)

RedStone, a multi-chain oracle project, was mostly unknown in Korea until it appeared on Binance Launchpool in late February. The surprise listing sparked a wave of curiosity: “Wait, what is this project?”

However, due to limited Korean marketing, some users confused it with Redstone Chain, a blockchain for on-chain gaming. Still, the Binance boost helped RedStone gain recognition, and conversations are slowly starting to build in local communities.

🔹 Orca (ORCA)

Orca coverage was included in last week’s report.

2-2. Trading Volume

Last week, the combined daily average trading volume on Upbit and Bithumb reached approximately 3.1 billion, showing a dramatic decline of nearly 13% compared to the previous week. The cumulative trading volume over the 7-day trading period totaled 19billion, with Upbit and Bithumb recording 14.6 billion and 4.3 billion respectively. In fact, the cumulative trading volume of both exchanges has been on a declining trend for more than a month.
*Upbit and Bithumb are the dominant cryptocurrency exchanges among the five major platforms that have obtained Korea's Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) certification, representing approximately 95% of the domestic market share.

Since entering a recent bearish phase, XRP and USDT have dominated trading volumes on major domestic exchanges for several consecutive weeks. Overall market activity remains subdued, with trading volumes at their lowest levels this year and declining for several consecutive weeks.

With the exception of XRP and BTC, no significant trading volume occurred, and this downward trend in volume is expected to continue unless Bitcoin rebounds to $85,000.

2-3. Top 10 Gainers

Last week's highest performer, Solayer, is an L1 chain that adopts SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) as its execution environment and has its own consensus mechanism. Despite the bearish market, it rose to its previous high after listing, showing a distinctive upward trajectory.

Additionally, Safe(SAFE) and Cat in a Dogs World (MEW) showed returns in the 20% range, with MEW experiencing price differences between Upbit and Bithumb. For other coins, volatility was high, making this period less significant in terms of meaningful returns.

3-1. Web3 Comes Together for Wildfire Relief

Last week, South Korea was hit by one of the worst wildfires in its history, causing severe damage across the southeastern region. In response, the Web3 community quickly rallied to raise donations for those affected. Projects like Solv, Avalon Labs, Uxlink, Merlin Chain, Aethir, Delysium, and IOST were among the first to take action.

Many KOLs also stepped up, including major channels like WeCryptoTogether, Marshall, and Danchoi. A donation challenge started circulating, where KOLs would tag each other to keep the giving going — creating a powerful ripple effect.

Together, Web3 projects and KOLs have raised over 10 million KRW, with the actual number likely much higher. It's a meaningful reminder that the Web3 space in Korea can have a real social impact — and hopefully, gestures like this can also foster better cooperation with regulators and public sentiment in the future.

3-2. FSC Cracks Down on Unregistered Exchanges

Starting March 25, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) began blocking access to mobile apps from 17 unregistered overseas crypto exchanges on the Google Play Store.

This move follows previous announcements by the FIU, and includes platforms like KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex, XT.com, Bitrue, CoinW, CoinEX, ZoomEX, Poloniex, DigiFinex, Pionex, Blofin, Apex Pro, CoinCatch, WEEX, and BitMart.

The FSC has stated that further measures will continue in cooperation with the Apple App Store and Korea’s Broadcasting and Communications Commission.

📄 FSC’s official press release (KR)

3-3. A Packed Week of Offline Events

With spring in full swing, offline events are booming across Korea. Just last week, the community saw a wide range of meetups and activations, including:

Chainlink House Seoul – Powered by Scroll
Game Night by Fantrie, Fautor & BitMEX
XDC Network: Building Asia’s Web3 Ecosystem
Korea is Seeing Signs
HashKey Chain Hackathon: Taiyi

Korean Web3 is proving once again that it’s not just online — the in-person energy is just as strong.

4. Events

As always, many projects held AMAs last week with various Korean KOLs. Which AMAs are INF introducing this week?

4-1. AMA with Wecrypto x SOON

An AMA introducing SOON was held with WeCrypto KOL. SOON is known in Korea as a project funded by GEEK, which was founded by former Binance employees. CZ also gave a shoutout to the SOON project. During the AMA, they shared an introduction to the SOON project, recent updates, and upcoming plans.

AMA Recap

4.2. Abstract AMA with Fireant & Bascketball

Abstract team member Phin, Head of Marketing, along with Fireant and a Basketball KOL, held an AMA session. During the AMA, meaningful discussions were held such as the benefits content creators can enjoy on Abstract, the screening criteria for becoming an Abstract streamer, on-chain and growth metrics, and the price of Pengu.

Phin stated that Abstract will continue striving to create a fun ecosystem and will support creators in engaging in various activities.