A while ago, I saw an interesting discussion in a certain L1 blockchain community—about Plasma, a public chain primarily focused on stablecoins. After taking a closer look, there are indeed some points worth elaborating on.

The most straightforward selling point is zero-fee USDT transfers. This is not just a marketing gimmick; the protocol directly sponsors gas fees for transactions—users holding USDT can transfer without needing to hold native tokens, and the fees are zero. How significant is this for the impact on cross-border small-value remittances? Compared to traditional banks, which have settlement cycles of several days and hefty fees, this system offers near-instant settlement at almost zero cost. For scenarios like cross-border e-commerce and remittance applications for small and medium-sized enterprises, the barriers are truly lowered to an incredible degree.

Another interesting technical direction is the pBTC bridging solution. It directly brings Bitcoin’s liquidity in for collateral or settlement, eliminating the need to deal with the trust risks associated with wrapped BTC. Coupled with Tether’s deep support, the compliance and friendliness are indeed ahead of the curve. Currently, with MiCA, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other regions relaxing their attitudes toward stablecoin licenses, the potential for this pathway is gradually opening up.

Regarding the team background, this project’s talent pool is quite impressive—experience at Apple, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and a genetic background in high-frequency trading. The fact that it absorbed $250 million in stablecoins within just one hour of mainnet launch indicates that institutional investors and whales are genuinely participating with real capital, not just hype.

From the perspective of stablecoin carrying capacity, centralized stablecoins like USDT and USDC require users to pay native gas when transferring on Solana or Ethereum. Plasma’s strategy is to add an "accelerator"—supporting custom gas tokens so users can pay fees with USDC, enabling EVM compatibility for seamless DApp migration, and implementing PlasmaBFT consensus to achieve thousands of TPS with one-second finality. This significantly outperforms traditional transfer experiences. Decentralized over-collateralized stablecoins like DAI have strong censorship resistance, but their volatility and unstable gas costs pose challenges. Running similar frameworks on Plasma can optimize both performance and costs considerably.

Currently, in the development stage, the upcoming Q2 staking delegation mechanism will allow XPL holders to participate in network security and earn rewards. The stablecoin TVL has already exceeded $7 billion. If the TVL continues to grow, the token’s economic cycle will be further activated. The current price range is between $0.14 and $0.16. Although there is some pressure from large unlocks in July, considering the project’s focus and real-world applications, the medium- to long-term potential remains substantial.

Broadly speaking, if stablecoins truly evolve into the next trillion-dollar sector, Plasma’s vertical deep-dive and infrastructure-oriented positioning offer much more room for a turnaround than those generic Layer-1s. Monitoring the growth of TVL, daily USDT trading volume, and cross-chain bridge liquidity, it’s worth including in a mid-term watchlist.