Bro, do you know what I saw last night in the African Yellow Card group?
A Nigerian guy posted a screenshot of a transfer, sending 37 USDT with a fee of 0.00. Someone below asked him what chain he used, and he replied: 'Plasma, what's gas?'
In that moment, I got goosebumps. Just think about it, someone who might have never touched a VISA card in their life is using stablecoins to send money back home, completely unaware that this thing actually requires a 'toll fee'. It feels like back in 2007 when you taught your parents to use Chrome, and they responded: So, the browser doesn't need to load for 3 minutes? So, you don't need to install 3721 to go online?
What Plasma does is use technology to render 'common sense' ineffective.
That 'zero-fee channel' of theirs is not a scheme to exchange subsidies for traffic; it directly writes Paymaster into the protocol layer—if the user's wallet has USDT, sending it just works, and there is no such classical drama of 'Gas being insufficient to get stuck'. I calculated a number: previously, when you transferred 100 USDT on Ethereum, you faced congestion and paid $5 in Gas, which is 1% wear; Solana is cheap, but still deducts a few cents. Plasma directly wipes this 1% to 0.
This is not optimization; this is betrayal.
What's even harsher is that it has even conditioned your mindset. Previously, using some L2, transferring USDT would take 10-20 minutes to arrive, and I even developed the habit of 'submitting and then going to make a cup of coffee'. As a result, PlasmaBFT slapped sub-second confirmations onto my face—just after signing with MetaMask, the notification sound for the exchange deposit arrived. To be honest, at that moment I was a bit dazed: have we been foolish to queue and pay at toll booths for the past few years?
And that Bitcoin bridge.
Many people do not understand why Plasma insists on anchoring to the BTC mainnet. This is actually a political declaration: if you want to be the settlement layer for global digital cash, you cannot rely on Ethereum for support. Anchoring to Bitcoin's finality is equivalent to finding a reliable backing that doesn't require you to watch anyone's face. It doesn't want to be the second Ethereum; it wants to be the SWIFT of the dollar, but with zero toll fees.
You talk about token economics? XPL has indeed dropped so much that even its mother wouldn't recognize it. But I dare say, when the user experience is as thin as paper, the value will eventually find a way to flow back. Tether's CEO personally endorsing it isn't for charity—170 billion dollars in market value for USDT, with tens of billions in fees given to Tron and Ethereum every year; if it were you, would you be anxious?
Plasma is the knife that Tether has honed for five years. The blade has only one statement: the toll booth should be dismantled.
Tonight I transferred some U to the Plasma address again. Not for any other reason, just because of that Nigerian guy who asked—'what's gas?'
This issue is worth five hundred million dollars in public offerings.
