On the universal property of Waldhausens K-theory

In this note we show that Waldhausens K-theory functor from Waldhausen categories to spaces has a universal property: It is the target of the universal global Euler characteristic, in other words, the additivization of the functor sending a Waldhausen category C to obj(C) . We also show that a large class of functors possesses such an additivization.