Anna-汤圆

In today's world where various scaling solutions are flourishing, Plasma is once again brought to the forefront, which sounds somewhat dramatic. After all, early Plasma received a lot of attention, but very few actually used it in practice. The reason is quite simple: the experience was too difficult to use, the exit was too troublesome, the risk of data loss was high, and complex applications couldn't really go on-chain. Later, with the rise of rollups, Plasma seemed to be naturally phased out.

But as the demand for cross-chain increases, the proof systems mature, and the data layer shows a trend towards modularization, researchers are beginning to re-examine this 'old technology.' The goal of Plasma 2.0 is not nostalgia, but to bring out the parts it excels at in a new technological environment.

The reason many companies' payroll processes are fragile is that critical steps are dispersed across multiple systems: attendance on one platform, payroll rules in another system, tax logic in a third module, and final payments relying on completely different payment channels. As long as the data in any of these steps does not match, the entire process will come to a halt. In the past, we often attributed payroll issues to software being difficult to use, but the deeper reason is that payroll settlement is not a continuous, unified event, but rather a result forced together from different sources.

In the world of crypto assets, on-chain asset management has long faced issues of fragmentation and complexity. Although attempts such as DeFi indices, yield aggregators, and tokenized portfolios continue to emerge, they often bring new frictions: some require trust in operators, others are too rigid, and the user experience is not intuitive enough. The On-Chain Traded Funds (OTFs) proposed by Lorenzo Protocol are specifically designed to address these issues, combining the concept of funds with the native characteristics of blockchain to form a completely new way of thinking.

OTFs were initially described as 'like ETFs, but native to the Internet.' This analogy helps with understanding, but in reality, it represents a different logic. Traditional ETFs originate from the financial system, with layers of approval and institutional support, while OTFs emphasize transparency, speed, and code governance. Fund rules are directly written into smart contracts, and every transaction can be verified and traced without relying on hidden management privileges. This design allows users to clearly see how funds operate, eliminating the long-standing black box feeling of on-chain asset management.

Not long ago, I heard a merchant complain: “Guarantee? What guarantee? It only counts once the customer service agrees.” At that moment, I realized that today's so-called guarantees actually have structural problems. Whether it's delivery timeliness, service level commitments, buyer protection, or logistics guarantees, they have never been truly tied to the channels that move funds. Guarantees are often just marketing rhetoric, backend policies, or contract terms, rather than executable financial instruments. #Plasma provides another idea: programmable guarantees, which automatically trigger and adjust settlements in real-time once evidence shows that the commitment has been broken.