Amid the stablecoin craze, Plasma, a stablecoin-specific blockchain, recently completed a $500 million public offering.
Plasma originally planned to raise $50 million, but deposits reached the $500 million subscription limit within minutes of opening staking, attracting over 1,100 wallets to participate, with a median staking amount of $35,000.
According to crypto analyst @ai_9684xtpa, one address spent approximately $100,000 in gas fees to secure a stake, becoming the first address to deposit into Plasma.
Why was Plasma’s $500 million quota quickly “snappped up”? What are the key features of Plasma’s stablecoin-specific blockchain? This article provides a brief overview of the project.
Deeply integrated with Tether, backed by a strong investor lineup
Over the past six months, Plasma has completed three rounds of funding, with a strong lineup of investors.
l In October 2024, Plasma announced the completion of a $3.5 million funding round led by Bitfinex, with participation from Manifold Trading, Anthos Capital, Karatage, Split Capital, and Christian Angermayer.
l In February 2025, Plasma announced the completion of a $24 million funding round led by Framework Ventures. Bitfinex continued to participate in this round, and it also attracted investments from notable institutions or individuals such as Tether CEO & Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino, Mirana Ventures, Cumberland DRW, Flow Traders, Bybit, IMC Trading, Karatage, Nomura Holdings, and Cobie.
l In May 2025, Plasma announced the completion of a strategic investment from Founders Fund, the venture capital firm founded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Notably, Bitfinex, which is closely linked to Tether, and Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether and CTO of Bitfinex, also participated in the investment. The close collaboration between Plasma and Tether extends far beyond financial support.
Tether enjoys fee-free transactions and whitelisted gas payment privileges on Plasma, while Plasma supports USDT0—Tether’s cross-chain version—enabling seamless transfers of USDT across different blockchains.
What are the key features of Plasma’s stablecoin-dedicated chain?
While the market has seen numerous dedicated chains for applications such as gaming, social media, and AI, there have been few “dedicated chains” specifically designed for the high-frequency transactions of stablecoins. Plasma has identified this market gap and is committed to building a dedicated chain for stablecoins.
Plasma’s core objective is to optimize the stablecoin transaction experience, with key features including:
USDT zero-fee transfers. This feature is specifically designed for USDT payments, allowing users to choose to wait a bit longer in exchange for fee-free transfers.
Anchoring to Bitcoin network security. Plasma did not choose to build on Ethereum or other general-purpose public chains but instead constructed a Bitcoin sidechain to anchor the state root to the Bitcoin network, inheriting its decentralization and high security, eliminating single points of failure, and providing trust-minimized stablecoin settlement.
Customizable Gas tokens. Users can pay transaction fees using authorized tokens such as USDT or BTC, without needing to hold Plasma’s native Gas token XPL. The off-chain system automatically converts these tokens to XPL at market rates, simplifying user operations.
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 transaction requirements of stablecoins.
100% EVM compatibility. Plasma supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), enabling developers to seamlessly deploy Ethereum smart contracts and build stablecoin-related applications without modifying code.
Additionally, Plasma is researching privacy transaction features to enhance user privacy protection by hiding transaction details without compromising compliance.
Team Background and Latest Developments
Plasma’s founder, Paul Faecks, is also the CEO and co-founder of Alloy, another institutional investor DeFi platform. Paul Faecks previously worked at Deribit and graduated from the Technical University of Munich.
Plasma’s CTO, Hans, was formerly the CEO of Layer1 Topl. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, and holds a Master’s and Ph.D. 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 such as lending and trading around stablecoins.
In terms of ecosystem partnerships, Plasma has established strategic collaborations with protocols such as Ethena, Aave, Morpho, Curve, and Maker.
