Amid the Surge of Stablecoins, the Stablecoin-Specific Chain Plasma Recently Completed a $500 Million Public Offering

Plasma initially planned to raise $50 million, but within minutes of opening for staking, deposits reached the $500 million subscription limit.

The stablecoin-specific chain Plasma has completed a $500 million public offering.

According to ChainCatcher, Plasma initially planned to raise $50 million. However, within minutes of opening for staking at 10:00 on August 14th, deposits reached the $500 million subscription limit, attracting over 1,100 wallets, with a median staking amount of $35,000.

According to crypto analyst @ai_9684xtpa, a certain address spent about $100,000 in gas fees to become the first address to deposit into Plasma.

Earlier reports indicate that at least five crypto institutions participated in Plasma's seed round last year, raising a total of $3.5 million. In February, the company closed a $24 million Series A round led by Framework Ventures. Bitfinex, Tether CEO & Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino, Mirana Ventures, Cumberland DRW, Flow Traders, Bybit, IMC Trading, Karatage, Nomura Holdings, and Cobie also participated in the round.

In May, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund announced a strategic investment in Plasma.

Plasma is closely tied to Tether, with both Bitfinex, closely linked to Tether, and Tether CEO & Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino investing in the company.

Tether enjoys fee-free trading and whitelist gas payment privileges on Plasma, while Plasma supports USDT0—the cross-chain version of Tether—facilitating seamless transfers of USDT across different blockchains.

According to crypto analyst @ai_9684xtpa, there are few “specialized chains” for such high-frequency stablecoin transactions. Plasma aims to create a stablecoin-specific chain, seizing this market gap.

Plasma's core goal is to optimize the stablecoin trading experience, with key features primarily in the following areas:

l Zero-fee Transfers for USDT: This feature is specifically designed for USDT payments, allowing users to choose to wait a bit longer for fee-free transfers.

l Anchoring to Bitcoin's Network Security: Plasma chose not to build on Ethereum or other general-purpose public chains, but instead anchored its state root to the Bitcoin network through a Bitcoin sidechain, inheriting its decentralization and high security, eliminating single points of failure, and providing trust-minimized stablecoin settlement.

l Custom Gas Tokens: Users can pay transaction fees using authorized tokens like USDT or BTC, without needing to hold Plasma's native gas token XPL. The off-chain system automatically converts to XPL at market price, simplifying user operations.

l High Throughput and Low Latency: Plasma employs the PlasmaBFT consensus mechanism (evolved from Fast HotStuff), supporting thousands of transactions per second with low end-to-end latency, meeting the high-frequency trading needs of stablecoins.

l 100% EVM Compatibility: Plasma supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to seamlessly deploy Ethereum smart contracts and build stablecoin-related applications without modifying code.

Additionally, Plasma is also researching privacy transaction features to enhance user privacy protection by concealing transaction details (without sacrificing compliance).

Plasma's founder, Paul Faecks, is also the CEO and co-founder of another institutional investor DeFi platform, Alloy. Paul Faecks previously worked at Deribit and graduated from the Technical University of Munich.

Plasma's CTO, Hans, was the CEO of Layer1 Topl. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, and holds a master's and PhD in computer science from Arizona State University.

In terms of progress, Plasma plans to launch the mainnet Beta version in the second quarter of 2025, at which point it will introduce DeFi services related to lending and trading around stablecoins.

In terms of ecosystem collaboration, Plasma has established strategic partnerships with protocols such as Ethena, Aave, Morpho, Curve, and Maker.