Plasma launched the beta of its layer one (L1) mainnet and the XPL token on Thursday, pitching a chain purpose-built for stablecoin transactions and declaring more than $2 billion in stablecoin total value locked at kickoff.
Plasma Targets Payments at Scale With Mainnet Beta, USDT Fee-Free Transfers
The company says the network debuts with PlasmaBFT, a high-throughput consensus layer tailored to payments, plus authorization-based transfers that let users move USDT without fees. At launch, Plasma lists more than 100 decentralized finance (DeFi) integrations, including Aave, Ethena, Fluid, and Euler, with a near-term focus on savings products, deep USDT liquidity, and low dollar-borrowing costs.
Plasma also previewed Plasma One, a stablecoin-native “neobank” app meant to push everyday spending into digital dollars. The pitch: pair payments infrastructure with a consumer front end so stablecoins feel less like plumbing and more like money you can actually use.
In comments shared with Bitcoin.com News and attributed to CEO Paul Faecks, Plasma framed stablecoins as “Money 2.0” and said the goal is universal dollar access regardless of local market conditions. It is an ambitious promise; delivering it will hinge on execution, partner traction, and how quickly users test fee-free transfers at scale.
Plasma points to earlier community programs to explain the day-one liquidity. A June deposit drive hit a $1 billion cap in a little over 30 minutes, and a $50 million public sale drew $323 million in commitments, according to the company’s figures. A subsequent Binance Earn collaboration for an onchain USDT product reached a $1 billion subscription cap, which Plasma calls the exchange’s largest such campaign.
If the figures hold, Plasma opens as the No. 8 blockchain by stablecoin liquidity, a notable starting line in a market where depth matters for payments and borrowing. At press time, the stablecoin economy is a mere $4.445 billion away from surpassing $300 billion. The company did not disclose validator counts, throughput metrics, or incident response details, items developers and institutions typically scrutinize before moving serious flow.
For now, the roadmap centers on making digital dollar transfers cheap, liquid, and boring-in a good way. The mainnet beta gives Plasma a live arena to prove that a specialized chain can turn stablecoin marketing into stablecoin usage, and whether the promised fee-free rails scale beyond a flashy first day. Market observers will be watching liquidity and uptime.
