Author: Rhythm Worker
From WLFI to Pump.fun to Plasma, IDO public sales during the bull market are getting hotter and hotter.
Following the market explosion from Pump.fun, the most eye-catching recent development is the new stablecoin-specific blockchain - Plasma - jointly invested by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legend investor Peter Thiel.
In just two months, this project, which has attracted investment from top capital such as Bitfinex (Tether's sister company), Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and Framework, has already raised nearly $27.5 million, with a valuation skyrocketing to $500 million.
Why has Plasma quickly become a new darling of the market?
Before the public sale begins, the Plasma team has released a set of rigorous and clear participation rules. If users want to participate in the public sale of XPL, they must first deposit stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, DAI, or USDS into the official vault on the Ethereum mainnet (Plasma Vault).
The earlier and longer the deposit, the more 'unit values' the account will accumulate, which determine how much XPL you can buy at that time.
Therefore, when the official released the governance token XPL quota allowing users to deposit liquidity, the first batch of $500 million was snapped up within minutes, and the newly added $500 million deposit cap was sold out within 30 minutes. Even more astonishingly, there were large holders who spent $100,000 in transaction fees on the Ethereum mainnet just to secure a quota.
So what makes Plasma special?
What makes Plasma unique is its use of 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 be paid directly with USDT for gas, and ordinary USDT transfers are completely free.
In addition to cost advantages, Plasma also has two important features: First is the native privacy feature, where on-chain transactions are publicly visible by default, but users can simply check a box to hide address and amount information, with optional disclosure available when needed; second is Bitcoin liquidity, where Plasma utilizes permissionless bridging technology to exchange BTC on-chain, leveraging Tether's own dollar depth to achieve low loan pools and lending.
How much can Plasma earn for Tether in a year?
Although Plasma offers zero transaction fees for USDT transfers, this does not mean that Plasma has no income.
The reason Plasma dares to tell users that 'USDT transfers are completely free' is not because Tether subsidizes with real money, but because it breaks down transactions by complexity and priority, splitting all transactions into two billing methods. In simple terms, it's like saying 'Children under 1 meter are free'.
Ordinary USDT transfers occupy little block space, just like 'children under 1 meter are free', nodes directly bundle these transactions into blocks without charging users gas. However, to prevent spam transactions, Plasma has a basic throughput limit. At the same time, to avoid malicious transaction spamming, users are required to leave a small amount of collateral on-chain, serving as a security deposit: once the threshold for abuse is triggered, this collateral will be automatically forfeited. This preserves the 'free' experience while blocking spam traffic.
Other requests that exceed simple transfers, such as more complex operations like calling multiple contracts at once, batch settlements, and institutional-level rapid settlements, will be identified by the system, which will require payment of fees. The main revenue for Plasma nodes comes from here, along with small transaction fees collected from cross-chain asset transfers and custody services, giving the entire network self-sustaining capabilities. Also, since simple transfers are no longer charged, the pricing model can be more flexible: according to current on-chain estimates, thousands of free payments per second consume very low resources, allowing nodes to cover costs and maintain profits with a small amount of high-level business.
Supporting this mechanism is Plasma's 'dual-layer framework'. The underlying 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 seamlessly. By removing traditional gas calculations, execution efficiency is actually higher. Messari mentioned in its assessment report that Plasma's improved consensus can stably handle thousands of payments at the CPU single-core level during stress testing, and node rewards come entirely from that part of complex transactions.
So how does Plasma make money? The answer is already apparent.
First, enterprise-level 'dedicated lines' - cross-border remittance companies or game publishers that want to push transfers from milliseconds to microseconds must enter a paid lane, paying a fixed USDT monthly fee to ensure bandwidth.
Second, contracts and batch settlements - calling complex logic in DeFi protocols still requires gas payment, but the billing unit changes from ETH to USDT.
Third, bridging and custody - bringing assets from other chains to Plasma or redeeming from Plasma requires 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 receive block rewards, and the Plasma treasury retains a portion to be auctioned over time, used to continuously subsidize 0 gas payments for peer-to-peer USDT.
The four factors combined are enough to offset the expenses of free transfers and could even bring Tether a whole new cash flow.
Assuming Plasma can successfully capture most of the USDT traffic currently running on Tron and Ethereum, the first direct income will come from the majority of on-chain transaction fees siphoned off by Tron and Ethereum - annual revenue could reach about $1 billion to $2 billion, along with enterprise services and cross-chain fees, the new revenue range is expected to reach $1.2 billion to $3 billion. Plasma might also have other hidden benefits and ecological spillovers: such as 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.
Due to Plasma's exemption from ordinary USDT transfer fees, it is conservatively estimated that Plasma could bring Tether $1 billion in revenue in a year.
Beyond revenue, more importantly, is the discourse power. In the past, Tether had to follow the rhythms of Ethereum and Tron; once the other party raised fees or modified rules, USDT could only passively comply, and the infrastructure supporting USDT (settlement, execution, bridging, etc.) was largely beyond Tether's control.
Now, Tether enhances the scenario of USDT as a settlement currency, hoarding BTC as reserve assets, and the two converge in Plasma, aggregating the $150 billion USDT scattered across more than a dozen networks into a unified settlement layer, allowing transfers, exchanges, and recoveries to occur on Tether's own territory. Tether will also gain more pricing power and discourse power, naturally holding the charging gate of this network.
Details of Plasma's XPL public sale participation
As the public sale date approaches, 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 vault on Ethereum (Plasma Vault). The system will calculate a 'unit value' based on the amount and duration of deposits in each wallet, which ultimately determines the user's guaranteed subscription amount. In simple terms, the earlier the deposit and the longer the funds stay, the more XPL can be purchased during the public sale.
To prevent large holders from monopolizing quotas, the team has set a deposit cap of $50 million 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 with multiple wallets, the total quota must not exceed $50 million. Although there is no hard total limit set for the overall vault, the team will flexibly adjust the total deposit amount, with an initial cap set at $10 million, and will gradually open according to market demand to ensure the health and balance of allocations.
It is also important to note that after the public sale, users will need to submit new stablecoins to actually purchase XPL tokens, as the balance in the vault will not be automatically used to buy XPL tokens. If users do not use up their subscription quota, the excess will be automatically redistributed proportionally to those who oversubscribe. This means that users can moderately oversubscribe when purchasing to obtain additional XPL.
From a compliance perspective, all users participating in the public sale must complete a rigorous KYC review on the Sonar platform, including users who already have Echo accounts. Users from the United States must provide proof of qualified investor status, and the XPL tokens purchased will be additionally locked for 12 months after the public sale ends; users from regions such as the United Kingdom, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Ukraine will not be able to participate in this public offering.
The deposited stablecoin assets will first be exchanged 1:1 for 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 is launched, users can withdraw their principal and all accumulated earnings within a transparent and rapid withdrawal process, generally not exceeding 48 hours. During this period, the deposit receipt tokens held by users serve only as internal certificates, and any transfer action will be regarded as an early withdrawal. The official strongly recommends that users avoid using this token to participate in any DeFi activities.
The vault facilities used for Plasma's public sale are provided by Veda, which are currently widely applied and manage assets worth over $2.6 billion. In addition, all contracts have undergone strict audits by top security audit agencies such as Spearbit and Zellic, and the audit reports will be published before the mainnet Beta launch to further ensure fund safety and transparency.
As the public sale date approaches, this IDO by 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 attracted such great attention to this public sale.
(The above content has been excerpted and reprinted with the authorization of our partner PANews, original link | Source: BlockBeats)
"Whales are flocking, a complete analysis of Plasma's public sale rules and a preview of XPL's value" was first published on (Blocker).
