After creating the myth of a 0.1 dollar Airdrop, what is the future outlook for Plasma?

Author: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

On September 25, 2025, the Beta version of the Plasma mainnet, a Layer 1 stablecoin payment project supported by Bitfinex, was launched, integrating over 100 DeFi protocols including Aave, Ethena, Fluid, and Euler.

Plasma has created a myth where investors can seize an airdrop worth $8390 for just $0.1. What is the future outlook for Plasma?

1. Capture $8390 worth of XPL airdrop with $0.1

On Thursday, the stablecoin blockchain Plasma launched its mainnet test version, and its native token XPL was also launched.

Every participant in the Plasma pre-staking ICO plan receives XPL worth $8,390—even if they did not actually purchase tokens through the ICO. This news has caused countless people to slap their thighs in disbelief.

Plasma indicates that within three hours of its mainnet test version going live, half of the ICO participants have received their tokens. Plasma allocated a total of 25 million tokens for all pre-stakers, which will be distributed equally among all pre-stakers. This means that regardless of whether you deposit 1 dollar or 10,000 dollars, the additional rewards received will be the same.

The initial supply of Plasma tokens is 10 billion, of which 18% (or 1.8 billion) is currently in circulation. In the tokenomics of Plasma's XPL token, 10% of the token supply was allocated to the public sale in July, which was ultimately oversubscribed by more than $300 million. The team also reserved 40% of the token supply for ecosystem development, with 8% unlocked at launch and the remaining 25% distributed to the team and investors over a multi-year vesting period. Among the circulating XPL, a portion belongs to U.S. investors, who due to regulatory factors, will not receive their XPL until July 28, 2026, meaning the actual tradable XPL tokens will be less than 1.8 billion.

Since XPL was launched on mainstream exchanges on September 25, the price trend has been relatively stable, having previously exceeded $1.6, and as of the time of writing, it is reported at $1.51.

XPL was immediately favored by whales upon its launch. According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, a mysterious whale that heavily invested 24.29 million XPL tokens transferred the tokens to address 0x57d…02dd1 at 10:30 PM last night, and then transferred them to the Plasma mainnet through the Hyperliquid cross-chain bridge. The receiving address has not yet transferred or sold the tokens, valued at $39.6 million.

2. The Development Prospects of Plasma

1. Plasma may be the long-tail way to engage with Tether

Some industry insiders believe that, relative to its adoption rate, the valuation of Plasma may still be too high. Delphi Digital analyst @simononchain has pointed out that, although Plasma has not yet been truly adopted, the market often focuses on large opportunities such as stablecoins. “The market may view Plasma as a long-tail way to access Tether, which is quickly becoming one of the world's most valuable companies.”

Plasma is a Layer 1 blockchain dedicated to stablecoins supported by Tether. Tether's sibling company Bitfinex participated in the investment in Plasma, and Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino also personally participated in the financing of Plasma. Currently, Tether is still in a rapid growth phase. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has pointed out that USDT is growing rapidly worldwide. In the first half of 2025, the number of on-chain transfers of USDT is expected to increase by 120% compared to the entire year of 2024, with 66% coming from the West Asia, Middle East, and Africa regions.

Due to the special relationship between Plasma and Tether, investing in Plasma is also equivalent to indirectly investing in Tether. As Tether continues to grow stronger, investors will have confidence in Plasma as well.

2. The Competitive Landscape That Plasma Will Face

Plasma has an ambitious mission: to change the way funds flow globally. As early as February this year, Plasma raised $24 million to develop a new blockchain for Tether's USDT. However, Plasma is currently facing competition from multiple rivals.

First of all, Ethereum still holds the throne in terms of stablecoin liquidity, while Tron, Solana, and others are also strong competitors.

Secondly, stablecoin chains are rising rapidly, and competition is becoming increasingly fierce. On August 12, Circle announced the launch of Arc—an open Layer-1 blockchain designed specifically for stablecoin financial scenarios; on August 11, fintech giant Stripe partnered with crypto venture capital firm Paradigm to develop a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain focused on payments, named “Tempo”; the native asset issuance chain Noble built on Cosmos SDK; even Google recently announced the Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL)—focusing on providing digital payments and tokenization solutions for financial institutions with L1…

Therefore, Plasma's competitors are not only the established public chains in the cryptocurrency industry but also the emerging stablecoin chains and giants from traditional industries.

3. The Future of Plasma

Plasma has now launched its mainnet and native XPL token, introducing zero-fee USDT transfers through a custom consensus called PlasmaBFT, along with over 100 DeFi integrations. Within 24 hours of launching, Plasma attracted over $4 billion in cryptocurrency, ranking eighth in the value of deposits in blockchain DeFi, primarily due to the Plasma lending treasury and the ability for users locking assets in partner DeFi protocols to earn the native network token XPL. This morning, Plasma announced that within two days, the supply of stablecoins on the Plasma chain has surpassed $7 billion.

Due to its speed and zero fees, exchanges, financial companies, banks, etc. will be able to use Plasma as a settlement layer for large transfers. Banks or corporate consortiums can also run private overlay layers on Plasma to settle large interbank transfers with Bitcoin-backed finality. For corporate treasuries, transferring 50 million dollars between subsidiaries may take only a few seconds, instead of the days required by traditional SWIFT.

In addition to supporting settlement on the mainnet, Plasma will also launch a new banking product—Plasma One.

On September 22, Plasma announced the launch of Plasma One—the first native stablecoin banking solution. The target customers for this release are users in emerging markets with a strong demand for US dollars, offering features such as a stablecoin-supported bank card, fee-free USDT transfers, and ease of use.

Plasma One has the following features: Earn while you spend: Pay directly from your stablecoin balance while earning over 10% in returns; Real rewards: Get up to 4% cash back when spending with PlasmaOne's physical or virtual card; Borderless coverage: Use the card in over 150 countries and 150 million merchants; Zero fee USDT transfers: Instantly send digital dollars to individuals and businesses for free through the app; Fast registration: Register, complete the onboarding process, and receive a virtual spending card in minutes (not days).

Plasma One will fully integrate the entire Plasma ecosystem into a single application, such as integrating the DeFi ecosystem, exchange integration, and payment partners, providing pricing and liquidity, as well as a consistent user experience.

Summary

The popularity of the Plasma project was evident as early as June of this year: on June 9, the public token sale of Plasma completed a subscription of $500 million within minutes. The number of first-time participating wallets exceeded 1,100, with an average deposit amount of around $35,000. On June 12, Plasma announced that it would once again open a deposit cap of $500 million, raising the total cap to $1 billion…

Plasma CEO Paul Faecks once pointed out: “The dollar is a product that most people in the world are eager to obtain. Stablecoins provide a basic, permissionless way to hold and transfer dollars anywhere…”

Today, Plasma is shaking up the industry with the XPL airdrop, and leveraging its connection with Tether to establish itself as a strong competitor in reshaping the stablecoin blockchain landscape, attracting a host of investors. No one can guess what kind of brilliance Plasma can unleash on the path to disrupting traditional financial payments.