Time flies, it's been more than half a year since I started paying attention to XPL's public sale last summer.
During this period, I felt like an observer, watching the Plasma chain grow from nothing, completing a series of actions such as mainnet launch, token issuance, and ecological cold start.
Today, I want to share a few points I've observed during this time, which are purely personal and non-professional records.
First, what impressed me was the "good start" of its mainnet launch. On September 25 last year, the day the mainnet went live, it is said that over $2 billion in stablecoins were introduced as initial liquidity backing. This number is quite exaggerated and directly set a record for the TVL of new chains going live. Soon after, top exchanges like Binance and Bitfinex listed XPL for trading immediately. Such a level of resource tilt and industry recognition is rare in my impression. Of course, this also caused the price of the XPL token to experience significant volatility in the early stages, with a considerable increase within a few days of going live. At that time, I was wondering whether this was a temporary craze or the starting point of long-term value?
Subsequently, the project entered the so-called 'cold start' phase. To attract real funds and users, the official team and ecological partners launched very high liquidity incentives. I remember during that time, in mainstream DeFi protocols like AAVE and Fluid that had already deployed on the Plasma chain, simply depositing USDT, a stablecoin, could yield over 20%, and sometimes even spike to over 30% annualized returns. This is clearly a subsidy, a 'burning money' strategy to attract new users. However, I believe that in the early stages of public chain competition, this straightforward approach is often the most effective. It quickly pushed the TVL to new heights; according to some analyses, by early this year, its on-chain TVL had already reached the level of 3.6 billion dollars. Money comes in, and developers will be more motivated.
In terms of ecological construction, I see it following a 'compatibility and inclusiveness' route. Due to EVM compatibility, mature DeFi protocols on Ethereum can be easily deployed. Currently, there are already a considerable number of DEXs, lending protocols, and derivative projects on the chain. However, I personally feel that the ecology is still in its early stages; most are 'branch stores' of other chain projects, and original, phenomenon-level 'killer apps' are still in the making. This is a stage that all new blockchains must go through; Plasma needs time.
In addition, I particularly noticed one of their products called 'Plasma One'. This appears to be a digital banking and card system based on their stablecoin technology, claiming to offer cashback and high returns in many countries. This makes me feel that their ambition goes beyond the DeFi circles within blockchain and aims to connect to a broader range of traditional finance and consumption scenarios. If this can be achieved, the imagination space will be vast.
Finally, the topic that cannot be avoided is the token XPL itself. Its total supply is 100 billion tokens, with 10% allocated for public sales, 40% reserved for ecology and growth, and 25% each for the team and investors. There is a key timeline that all followers need to pay attention to: according to the economic model, the unlocking of the team and investor shares will begin one year after the public launch of the mainnet test version. This means that around July 2026, the market may witness a significant release of tokens. This is undoubtedly a potential pressure. By then, whether the actual adoption of the ecology and network effects can absorb this supply will be the key test of the project's success or failure.
My overall impression is that Plasma's start in the past six months has been spectacular, achieving high scores in funding, technology, and market attention. However, it has already passed the initial 'halo period', and the upcoming challenges are more practical: how to convert the 'liquidity tourists' attracted by incentives into real 'ecological residents'? How to incubate irreplaceable core applications? The answers to these questions will determine whether XPL can evolve from a successful market experiment into a truly valuable financial infrastructure.
