South Korea On-chain User Activity Analysis Report: H1 2025

Overview

In the first half of 2025, the activities of cryptocurrency users in South Korea expanded from centralized exchanges to the on-chain ecosystem. This shift marks a maturation of the market, with users participating in a more diversified manner.

In the three major ecosystems of Ethereum, Base, and Solana, Korean users exhibit different behavioral characteristics:

• Ethereum: Users hold large-scale assets, maintaining stable mainnet participation.
• Base: Users gradually increase their participation through decentralized applications.
• Solana: Attracts the most users, has high activity, but also has a high user churn rate.

These differences indicate that the cryptocurrency user group in South Korea exhibits diverse characteristics that cannot be summarized by a single trait. Project teams need to develop effective market strategies through systematic user segmentation.

Analysis of On-Chain User Activity Characteristics in South Korea

Event Time

• Ethereum and Base: Mainly focused from 9 AM to 11 PM
• Solana: Focused from midnight to 8 AM

Solana users remain active late at night, in stark contrast to other chains. This is because the Solana ecosystem is primarily aligned with North American time zones. Even in the early hours, when the market is active, Korean users actively participate. This indicates that Korean users have a high adaptability to the global market, with an active investment tendency that transcends time zone limitations.

Fund Distribution

The distribution of funds across different blockchains is significantly different:

• Ethereum: Total assets approximately $400 million, with a significant proportion held by whales and middle-class accounts.
• Solana: 99.9% are retail wallets, with an average holding of $30; a small number of whale wallets average holdings of over $8 million.
• Base: Attracted medium investors between the two.

This indicates that the Korean market has a diverse user base with varying investment preferences.

User Activity Trends

• Ethereum: Long-term stable trading volume, not affected by market fluctuations.
• Base and Solana: Sensitive to overall market sentiment and short-term events in trading pairs.

The trading trends of Base and Solana are similar, but there is a difference in daily active users. Solana has a higher user churn rate, while Base's active user count is steadily increasing.

dApp usage

• Solana: transaction-centric, mainly focused on DeFi trading.
• Ethereum and Base: More user participation in remittance and deposit activities, with diversified use cases.

The Kaito InfoFi service on Base is one of the main driving forces attracting users. Korean users respond positively to the reward structure and tend to provide returns through token staking and incentive claims.

Conclusion

Korean users should not be regarded as a homogeneous group; their characteristics are mainly reflected in the following three aspects:

1. Strong global market adaptability
2. Investment strategies and tendencies on different chains are clearly differentiated.
3. Show a high interest in incentive-based services.

Global projects considering entry into the South Korean market need to develop customized strategies that align with user characteristics. South Korea is a balanced market, with no bias towards specific stages or types. Strategy development should prioritize blockchains suitable for the target user segmentation and design a clear and sustainable incentive structure. Most importantly, these users should be seen as partners in the development of the ecosystem rather than simply users.