Brothers, I have been in the crypto circle for thirteen years.


In 2013, when BTC first broke a thousand dollars, I joined the mining craze in my university dorm; during the 2017 ETH ICO frenzy, I put almost all my savings into smart contracts, experienced overnight wealth, and also faced the zeroing out; later during DeFi Summer, the NFT boom, the Layer 2 competition, and the meme coin frenzy, I flipped hundreds of projects, made my first bucket of gold in life, and also lost everything in the bear market, leading me to doubt my life.


Over the years, BTC has left me with the deepest impression as 'digital gold'—scarce, safe, with full hedging properties; just holding it feels secure, and almost no one dares to say it’s wrong to hold it long-term; ETH, on the other hand, is the 'world computer,' with the largest ecosystem, capable of running DeFi, NFT, GameFi, SocialFi—everything, with the most complete developer toolchain, sustaining the innovation of the entire web3.


But one thing has always made me feel awkward: daily payments, after so many years, is still the weakest link in web3.


I've tried the Lightning Network, sometimes the fees for transferring coffee money are high and low, channel management is troublesome; I've used the Ethereum mainnet, where Gas prices are exorbitant during peak periods; I've used various L2s, with bridging friction, cross-chain fragmentation, confirmation delays, gas token switching, I've just gotten tired over the years. Stablecoins clearly circulate hundreds of billions of dollars globally every day, but a truly smooth, frictionless payment experience like WeChat or Alipay has never appeared.


Until recently, I completely shifted my focus to Plasma, the more I study it the more obsessed I become, the more I use it the more I feel: in the hardest, most essential track of payments, someone is finally seriously pushing it to the extreme.


Plasma hasn't chased any trends, hasn't copied any popular projects, just quietly focused on one thing: making stablecoin daily payments at an infrastructure level - as natural and frictionless as sending a message.


For the first time, I transferred 50 small USDT transactions in a mixed environment of Plasma testnet + mainnet, with the paymaster fully subsidizing Gas, using USDT directly as a custom gas token, total cost $0.00, confirmation time stable at sub-second level, that moment really felt like 'finally waiting for this'. It's not a marketing gimmick, it's genuinely enjoyable to use.


Why do I think Plasma has the potential to become the 'king' of the payment track?


Firstly, it's pure focus. BTC back in the day was solely focused on peer-to-peer electronic cash, ETH was focused on smart contract platforms, both achieved extreme results by concentrating on one core issue, ultimately defining an era. What Plasma is doing now is focusing on the most basic but trillion-dollar task of 'daily payments' - cross-border remittances, on-chain salary disbursements, content creator tipping, GameFi microtransactions, e-commerce small settlements, it is gradually smoothing out the friction in these real scenarios.


The community atmosphere is completely different. I've spent a lot of time in Binance Square and other discussion areas, and my deepest impression is: here no one shouts 'hundred times', 'moon', 'surpass ETH', it's all seasoned individuals pragmatically reviewing landing details.


Someone is breaking down the sustainability model of the paymaster funding pool, how to maintain subsidies through protocol fees repurchasing XPL; someone is testing extreme scenarios for OP_RETURN anchoring data availability; someone is simulating a forced rollback mechanism in the event of a brief sequencer downtime; someone is discussing the sub-second finality optimization of PlasmaBFT consensus in high-concurrency payment scenarios; and there are proposals to increase support for more emerging market stablecoins and expand payment channels.


These discussions sound 'unsexy', but they are deadly - because they directly address the pain points of real adoption.


I also submitted a few small suggestions: optimize the paymaster subsidy threshold to avoid abuse, increase native support for local stablecoins in Asia, expand offline merchant QR code payment interfaces. Unexpectedly, the official responded quickly, and two of the points have already been partially implemented in subsequent commits. This kind of governance closed loop reminds me of the early days of BTC and ETH: community proposals can really drive things forward, executed discreetly, and ultimately snowball.


Current on-chain data also makes me increasingly reassured (DefiLlama + Dune latest):


TVL stabilizing around $3.45B, with USDT accounting for 88%, genuine payment usage rather than arbitrage volume;


Active addresses month-on-month +27%, new address proportion is healthily above 65%;


Daily DEX volume + payment scenario transaction volume stabilizing at $9M-$14M;


Part of the sequencing income is used for repurchasing/burning XPL, the deflationary mechanism has been implemented;


Developer weekly active addresses exceed 800, GitHub has substantial iterations every week: paymaster logic optimization, more stablecoin integration, challenge period verification enhancement, batch state channel compression.


Current price $0.0978, mistakenly killed by the bear market beginning in 2026 by 94%+, but the fundamentals have not collapsed at all. The team is low-key and pragmatic, progressing step by step according to milestones, this is what true infrastructure should look like.


To put it bluntly, what the crypto world lacks most right now is this kind of 'unsexy but deadly' project.


Too many projects come out shouting 'killer app' and 'ecosystem first', only to fizzle out in six months. Plasma is eerily quiet, no KOLs or big names leading the narrative, no meme emotions, relying solely on genuine usage slowly climbing, TVL stabilizing, and scenarios landing.


My portfolio structure has changed:


Main position in BTC remains unchanged (core value storage, status as digital gold is unshakable);


ETH retains a considerable proportion (the world computer, innovation platforms will always have space);


Plasma's share is becoming more significant, not betting on short-term rebounds, but on its true potential to change global daily payment methods like BTC changed value storage and ETH changed application development.


Global stablecoin payments amount to hundreds of billions of dollars daily, in a trillion-dollar track, if Plasma captures even 1-2%, as a gas token + governance token + value capture token, the long-term potential is enormous.


Brothers, if you are tired of narrative coins, meme coins, and short-term hundred times dreams, come stay in the Plasma community for two days.


Personally transferring a few transactions, experiencing zero Gas sub-second confirmation;


Let's see how everyone rationally breaks down the paymaster and sequencer mechanisms;


Let's listen to how seasoned individuals discuss cross-border remittances and the migration of emerging market scenarios.


Maybe like me, you just get hooked while using it: in the hardest payment track, someone is finally striving for a king-like presence.


What do you think? Can Plasma become the 'king' of daily payments? Which payment scenario are you most looking forward to landing first? Let's discuss the landing details and on-chain data rationally in the comments, your deep insights might just inspire my next post!


#Plasma $XPL #BTC #ETH #Bitcoin ecosystem #stablecoin payments #creator tasks #币安广场 @Plasma #XPL