High-Performance Blockchain Built for Stablecoins: The Innovation and Vision of Plasma

Stablecoins have become a core application in the cryptocurrency field, playing a key role in payments, settlements, and financial services. However, the existing blockchain infrastructure has not been optimized for the characteristics of stablecoins, resulting in widespread issues such as high transaction costs, performance bottlenecks, and centralization risks.

To address these challenges, Plasma has proposed an innovative solution: to create a high-performance Bitcoin sidechain specifically designed for stablecoins. This chain is not only compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), but also offers zero-fee transactions, enhanced security, and scalability.

The concept of Plasma has attracted widespread attention in the market. In February 2025, the project announced the completion of a $24 million financing round, with investors including several well-known institutions and individual investors. In addition, a well-known trading platform chose Plasma's initial coin offering as its first ICO product.

The Necessity of a Blockchain Dedicated to Stablecoins

According to a report from an investment institution, the annual trading volume of stablecoins is expected to reach $15.6 trillion in 2024, surpassing the transaction volume of major credit card companies. As a "killer application" in the crypto space, stablecoins play a key role in multiple scenarios, attracting numerous new projects and traditional enterprises to accelerate their layout.

The Plasma team believes that the current mainstream public blockchains supporting stablecoins have obvious flaws: Ethereum's high Gas fees result in poor performance in payment scenarios; while a certain public blockchain has won the market with low fees and fast transactions, its number of nodes is limited and overly centralized.

In response to these issues, Plasma has proposed a new type of Blockchain specifically designed for stablecoins. It plans to build a sidechain on the Bitcoin Blockchain while maintaining full compatibility with the EVM. This design aims to meet the needs of decentralized financial activities while leveraging the security of Bitcoin and providing zero-fee stablecoin transactions to unlock the potential of the trillion-dollar stablecoin market.

Security and Zero Fee Mechanism

Plasma chose the Bitcoin network as its foundation because its unparalleled security and decentralized characteristics provide an ideal basis for global stablecoin settlements. In terms of the core consensus mechanism, the team independently developed PlasmaBFT, which is evolved from Fast HotStuff, supporting thousands of transactions per second.

To achieve trust-minimized secure inheritance, Plasma anchors the state root to the Bitcoin network. This design allows Plasma to achieve a security level comparable to Bitcoin without relying on a single validating node or intermediary, thus reducing the risk of single points of failure or attacks.

To address the issue of high transaction fees, Plasma has launched a "zero-fee" transfer mechanism for stablecoins. The network adopts a block architecture and is designed with two parallel processing layers: one layer handles regular fee transactions and is faster; the other layer specifically processes free transactions and is slightly slower. Users can choose the free option but need to "wait in line," or they can directly pay to use the fast lane.

XPL Token Issuance and Participation Rules

XPL is the native coin of the Plasma network, used to maintain consensus and security and serves as fuel for the execution layer. The public sale will be conducted on the Plasma official website, and participants must complete KYC identity verification and other compliance processes. This round of public offering plans to sell 10% of the total supply of XPL, corresponding to a fully diluted valuation of 500 million dollars.

The participation process includes the deposit phase and the lock-up period. During the deposit phase, participants can deposit stablecoins into the Plasma Vault on Ethereum, accumulating "units" based on the duration of the deposit, which will determine the guaranteed allocation share of XPL. After the deposit period ends, the funds will enter a lock-up period of at least 40 days.

When the Plasma mainnet Beta goes live, participants will receive the corresponding allocation of XPL coins, and the funds during the deposit period will also be bridged to the Plasma network and can be withdrawn. Participants in certain regions may face additional restrictions and lock-up periods.

Plasma emphasizes that this issuance structure aims to encourage long-term participation, maintain aligned interests, and enhance transparency, ensuring that early contributors can fairly share the benefits brought by network growth.