DeFi Newbie's Beginner's Guide (Part Four): A Detailed Description of Plasma Mainnet Launch Watering Subsidy Opportunities, Tutorials, and Precautions

Author: @Web3Mario

Abstract: 20% to 40% stablecoin APR! There's no time to explain, seize the opportunity for stablecoin subsidies following the launch of the Plasma mainnet! This article will summarize the opportunity points, participation tutorial, and precautions for stablecoin earnings on the Plasma mainnet from the perspective of a DeFi newbie.

Quick Overview of the Plasma Project Background

Just yesterday, on September 25th, many friends may have seen the wealth creation effect of XPL on various consulting or social media platforms, which has given its issuer, Plasma, a great start for their TGE. If you missed the early rounds of XPL, it's okay, because after the mainnet launch, Plasma has provided short-term high subsidy returns for various stablecoin yield scenarios. The author believes that these scenarios are all relatively low-risk, easy to operate, and very objective in terms of returns, making them suitable opportunities for DeFi beginners to participate. Therefore, I will quickly summarize some information and precautions that readers may find useful when participating.

First, let me quickly introduce the Plasma project. In summary, it is a Layer-1 blockchain with strong backing from investors, specifically designed for stablecoin payment systems, aiming to provide a high-performance, low-cost, near-instant transfer experience for USD stablecoins (such as USDT). Its core selling point is the “zero-fee USDT transfer” mechanism (meaning users do not need to pay additional gas fees when performing standard USDT transfer operations). Moreover, it is EVM compatible, allowing various mature EVM DeFi products to be quickly integrated.

Plasma (XPL) has gathered a strong lineup of investors, including Founders Fund, Framework Ventures, Bitfinex, and executives from the Tether team, providing both funding and strategic support. The project completed approximately $3.5 million in seed funding and around $20 million in Series A financing starting in 2024, and raised over $370 million during the public fundraising phase before the mainnet launch, used for stablecoin liquidity pools, ecological incentives, technology development, and security audits. This funding has laid a solid resource foundation for Plasma to build a zero-fee stablecoin transfer network and a broad DeFi ecosystem.

The significance of introducing these is that we can understand that this is a project that is highly unlikely to encounter problems in the short term, and therefore, there is a good guarantee in terms of asset security.

Opportunities, Tutorials, and Precautions for the Plasma Mainnet Cold Start Phase Water Subsidy

From the perspective of GTM strategy, the Plasma project adopts a high-profile approach. After a successful token TGE launch, the Plasma team provides short-term, high-return XPL token subsidies for the stablecoin use cases in the ecological DeFi projects to sustain the project's popularity and quickly attract funds. On average, most stablecoin yield scenarios can maintain an APR between 20% and 40%. According to DeFillama's information, since the mainnet went live yesterday, the TVL has rapidly reached $2.5b, and currently, mainstream DeFi projects have successively launched on Plasma, with official subsidies from Plasma also revolving around these mainstream DeFi protocols. Therefore, everyone should temporarily avoid participating in new, native early-stage projects to minimize unnecessary risks.

First, let's introduce how to discover these investment opportunities. The first key link is the special zone for Plasma on the Merkl platform. Merkl is a multi-chain Web3 incentive distribution platform that has allocated over $200 million in liquidity and points rewards to 200+ protocols, supporting various schemes such as liquidity mining, lending incentives, and airdrops, helping projects efficiently attract and retain users, so the security is not an issue. Plasma chooses to distribute rewards through the Merkl platform, and you can find all the subsidized scenarios in this link:

• Link Address:

It is worth noting that Merkl adopts the distribution form of Merkle Root for incentive models in some scenarios, which means that although the rewards accumulate in real time, they are not available for real-time collection. Users may need to actively claim rewards after a certain period of time. If you are looking for compounding opportunities, please do not overlook this detail.

Next, let's introduce how to transfer funds to the Plasma mainnet. The cross-chain protocol specified on the official website is straGate.finance. Users can click on it from the top navigation bar of the official website.

• Link address:

There are four points to pay attention to during the cross-chain process:

• Plasma uses an EVM ecosystem compatible private key system, so your EVM address can be reused in the Plasma ecosystem.
• The current Plasma mainnet requires XPL to pay for transaction gas, so it is necessary to deposit some XPL into the operating address in advance. It is recommended to purchase some from a CEX, 5 to 10 should be sufficient, and withdraw it to that address.
• Currently, the main subsidized stablecoin asset in the Plasma ecosystem is USDT0, which is a cross-chain stablecoin that adheres to the Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard launched by Tether for LayerZero. It is pegged 1:1 to USDT, so only USDT needs to be prepared.
• StarGate supports cross-chain transactions, so your cross-chain requests may not necessarily go through LayerZero; they could also be recommended through other transaction paths. It seems that the default protocol is Aori, which has notable slippage and fees. Be aware that if you do not actively choose to use the OFT protocol for cross-chain (the OFT method is free), you will incur significant fees, so please pay attention to this!

Finally, let's introduce some stablecoin-based risk-free investment scenarios that I believe are very suitable for beginners in DeFi to participate in:

1. Official Plasma Ecosystem Stablecoin Lending Vault: This is an officially established stablecoin vault where users can stake USDT0 into this vault to receive yields subsidized by the official. The funds provided will be automatically staked by the Vault into the AAVE USDT0 liquidity pool. Currently, the total TVL of this pool has reached $1,604.64M, and the current instantaneous yield rate has reached 33.78%.

There are two points to note:

• The current yield of this pool can only be maintained for 3 days, but the Compaign #0xffdb will end after 3 days, and the subsequent yield will depend on how much funding the project party continues to allocate to this pool.
• The redemption of this pool has a 48-hour cooling-off period, and the principal can only be retrieved after the cooling-off period ends.

The key links are as follows:

• Reward Details:
• Participation link:

2. Provide funds in the USDT0 pool on AAVE: The second good opportunity is to directly provide funds to AAVE's USDT0 pool, which will yield 20.42%, of which 3.08% comes from interest paid by borrowers, and the remaining 17.35% of the yield comes from official XPL token subsidies.

Points to note:

• The remaining duration of this subsidy is 6 days, and after expiration, the yield will depend on the official allocation.
• Since the funds from the official Lending Vault have also been fully injected into this pool, and the official Lending Vault has a cooling-off period, in the subsequent reward settings, if the official wants to retain the Lending Vault, the allocated yield must be higher than directly depositing funds into AAVE, in order to subsidize the time cost of user funds.
• The subsidy part only calculates the net value of the funds provided by the user, meaning that if you have a loan, this portion of the funds will be deducted from the principal calculation. Therefore, revolving credit is meaningless in this scenario.

Key link:

• Reward Details:
• Participation Link:

3. The Vault specified in Fluid or Euler provides USDT0: From a TVL perspective, Fluid and Euler should belong to the second tier of lending protocols, and compared to AAVE, they have designed more complex functions, therefore they are slightly weaker in terms of security, but they have also been time-tested. In these two scenarios, Plasma has also allocated rewards, and the current yields can reach 23.76% and 27.20%.

After going through the early subsidy phase, I will continue to track suitable financial scenarios on the Plasma chain for DeFi newcomers to participate in. Stay tuned!