Plasma’s so-called “gasless USDT” isn’t magic. It’s accounting.
The fees don’t disappear. They move. Apps, merchants, or relayers pick up the tab and front the cost. For users, that’s huge. No pop-ups. No wallet balance anxiety. Just tap and pay.
But the trade-off is real.
When you remove visible fees, you don’t remove constraints—you relocate them. The scaling challenge stops being pure TPS and starts looking more like risk management. Now the hard problems are spam prevention, abuse throttling, and managing short-term credit exposure for whoever is sponsoring transactions. Someone always pays. The question is when—and how safely.
And the early usage numbers? Still light. That suggests the core battle isn’t technical. It’s economic.
Can Plasma create a durable incentive loop where sponsors willingly keep covering fees after the hype fades? Because without a clear return—interchange revenue, float income, data leverage, tighter user lock-in—“gasless” risks becoming a marketing subsidy. A short-term growth hack.
Not a real payment rail.
