Author: Rhythm Worker
From WLFI to Pumpfun and now Plasma, the IDO public sales in the bull market are getting hotter.
Following Pumpfun's market explosion, the most eye-catching recent development is the new stablecoin dedicated blockchain jointly invested by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legendary investor Peter Thiel.
In just two months, this project, which has attracted investments from top-tier capital such as Bitfinex (Tether's parent company), Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and Framework, has already raised nearly $27.5 million, with a valuation soaring to $500 million.
Why has Plasma quickly become the new darling of the market?
Before the public sale was launched, the Plasma team released a rigorous and clear set of participation rules. Users wishing to participate in the XPL public sale must first deposit stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, DAI, or USDS into the official treasury on the Ethereum mainnet (Plasma Vault).
The earlier and longer you deposit, the more 'unit values' your account will accumulate; these unit values determine how much XPL you can purchase later.
Recently, when the official governance token XPL quota was released allowing users to provide liquidity, the first batch of $500 million was snapped up in minutes, and the additional $500 million deposit cap was sold out within 30 minutes. Even more remarkably, some large investors spent up to $100,000 in fees on the Ethereum mainnet just to secure a spot.
So what exactly is special about Plasma?
What makes Plasma unique is that it uses the Bitcoin mainnet as the final settlement layer, inheriting the security of the UTXO model while being fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) at the execution layer, ensuring seamless migration of smart contracts.
Most importantly, all transactions on the Plasma chain can directly use USDT to pay gas, while regular USDT transfers are completely free.
In addition to fee advantages, Plasma also has two important features: first, native privacy functions; on-chain transactions are publicly visible by default, but users can easily check a box to hide address and amount information, with selective disclosure available when needed; second, Bitcoin liquidity; Plasma brings BTC onto the chain through permissionless bridging technology, allowing low-slippage exchanges and BTC-collateralized stablecoin lending in conjunction with Tether's own USD deep pool.
How much more can Plasma earn for Tether in a year?
Although Plasma offers zero fees for USDT transfers, it does not mean that Plasma has no revenue.
The reason Plasma dares to tell users 'USDT transfers are completely free' is not that Tether subsidizes it with real money, but by categorizing transactions by complexity and priority, splitting all transactions into two billing methods. To put it simply, it’s like 'children under 1.2 meters tall get free tickets'.
Regular USDT transfers occupy small blocks and are like 'children under 1.2 meters tall'; nodes directly package these types of transactions into blocks without charging users gas fees. However, to prevent spam transactions, Plasma has a basic throughput cap. Additionally, to avoid malicious transaction flooding, users need to leave a small collateral on-chain, acting as a guarantee: once the abuse threshold is triggered, this collateral will be automatically forfeited. This approach preserves the 'free' experience while blocking spam traffic.
Other requests that exceed simple transfers, such as calling multiple contracts at once, batch settlements, and institutional-level rapid settlements, will be identified by the system and require payment. The main income for Plasma nodes comes from here, plus small fees collected from asset cross-chain and custody services, giving the entire network self-sustaining capabilities. Because simple transfers are no longer charged, the unit price of the charging model can be more flexible: according to current on-chain estimates, thousands of free payments per second consume extremely low resources, allowing nodes to cover costs and maintain surpluses with a small amount of high-level business.
Supporting this mechanism is Plasma's 'dual-layer framework'. The lower layer periodically anchors the block state back to Bitcoin, outsourcing security to BTC's proof of work; the upper layer is directly compatible with EVM, allowing developers to migrate Ethereum contracts easily. By removing traditional gas calculations, execution efficiency is actually higher. Messari's assessment report noted that Plasma's improved consensus can stably handle thousands of payments with a single-core CPU during stress tests, while node rewards come entirely from that portion of complex transactions.
So how does Plasma make money? The answer is clear.
First, enterprise-level 'dedicated lines' - if cross-border remittance companies or game publishers want to push transfers from millisecond to sub-millisecond levels, they must enter the paid lane and pay a fixed USDT monthly fee to ensure bandwidth.
Second, contracts and batch settlements - DeFi protocols calling complex logic still need to pay gas fees, but the unit of measurement changes from ETH to USDT.
Third, bridging and custody - transferring assets from other chains to Plasma or redeeming from Plasma incurs a small export tax, which goes into the Plasma treasury and is then distributed to nodes and the foundation according to the rules.
Fourth, governance token XPL inflation - validators staking XPL earn block rewards, while a portion is reserved by the Plasma treasury for continuous subsidies for point-to-point USDT with 0 gas payment over time.
The combination of these four factors is sufficient to support the network expenses of free transfers, and even provide Tether with a brand new cash flow.
If Plasma can successfully take on the majority of USDT traffic currently running on Tron and Ethereum, the first direct income would be the majority of on-chain fees that have been intercepted by Tron and Ethereum - an annual income could reach around $1 billion to $2 billion, in addition to enterprise services and cross-chain fees, with new income expected to reach $1.2 billion to $3 billion. Furthermore, Plasma may have other hidden benefits and ecological spillovers: for instance, attracting new large liquidity and projects to join, collecting certain 'taxes'; providing SDKs and enterprise node access, charging commercial fees for on-chain applications, etc.
However, due to Plasma's zero fees for regular USDT transfers, it is conservatively estimated that Plasma could bring in $1 billion in revenue for Tether in a year.
Beyond revenue, more importantly, is the influence. In the past, Tether had to follow the pace of Ethereum and Tron; once either increased fees or changed rules, USDT could only passively comply, and the infrastructure supporting USDT (settlement, execution, bridging, etc.) was largely outside Tether's control.
Now, as Tether enhances USDT's role as a settlement currency and hoards BTC as a reserve asset, the two converge in Plasma, consolidating the $150 billion USDT scattered across dozens of networks into a unified settlement layer, allowing transfers, exchanges, and recoveries to happen on Tether's own territory. Tether will also gain more pricing power and influence, naturally controlling the toll gate of this network.
Details of XPL public sale participation for Plasma
As the public sale date nears, the Plasma team has also announced detailed participation rules.
Users participating in the XPL public sale must first deposit stablecoins (USDT, USDC, DAI, or USDS) into the official treasury on Ethereum (Plasma Vault). The system will calculate 'unit values' based on each wallet's deposit amount and duration; these unit values ultimately determine the user's guaranteed subscription quota. In simple terms, the earlier the deposit and the longer the funds remain, the more XPL can be assured for purchase during the public sale.
To prevent large holders from monopolizing the quotas, the team has set a $50 million deposit limit for each Sonar account, and each account can bind a maximum of three wallets. This means that regardless of how much unit value users accumulate across multiple wallets, the total limit cannot exceed $50 million. Although there is no hard cap on the overall treasury, the team will flexibly adjust the total deposit limit, initially set at $100 million, and gradually open it based on market demand to ensure healthy and balanced distribution.
Additionally, it is important to note that after the public sale starts, users will need to submit new stablecoins to actually subscribe for XPL tokens; the deposit balance in the treasury will not be automatically used for purchasing XPL tokens. If users do not use their entire subscription quota, the excess will be automatically redistributed proportionally to those who over-subscribed. This means users can moderately oversubscribe when purchasing to gain additional XPL.
From a compliance perspective, all users participating in the public sale must complete a strict KYC review on the Sonar platform, including users with existing Echo accounts. U.S. users must provide proof of accredited investor status, and the XPL tokens subscribed will be locked for an additional 12 months after the public sale ends; users from regions such as the UK, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Ukraine will not be able to participate in this public sale.
Deposited stablecoin assets will first be exchanged 1:1 into USDT by whitelisted market makers on the Ethereum mainnet, and then securely transferred to the Plasma network using LayerZero cross-chain bridge technology, stored as USD₮0. After the mainnet Beta phase starts, users can withdraw their principal and all accumulated earnings within a generally transparent and rapid process, usually not exceeding 48 hours. During this period, the deposit receipt token held by users serves only as internal proof; any transfer action will be considered an early withdrawal, and users are strongly advised to avoid using this token for any DeFi activities.
The treasury facility used for this public sale by Plasma is provided by Veda, which is currently widely used and securely manages over $2.6 billion in assets. Furthermore, all contracts have passed rigorous audits from top security auditing firms such as Spearbit and Zellic, with audit reports to be published before the mainnet Beta launch, further ensuring fund security and transparency.
As the public sale date approaches, this IDO from Plasma is expected to reignite market enthusiasm; most participants believe that Plasma will directly compete with Tron in the future, becoming the new 'stablecoin public chain king', which has garnered such significant attention for this public sale.
