Big players rushing in: How hot is Plasma's $XPL public sale?
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Big players rushing in: How hot is Plasma's $XPL public sale?
New version, new god—will Plasma become legendary in this battle?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: Lüdong Xiao Gong
From WLFI to Pumpfun and now Plasma, each IDO public sale in this bull market has been hotter than the last.
Following Pumpfun’s market explosion, the most talked-about project recently is Plasma—a new blockchain purpose-built for stablecoins, backed by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legend Peter Thiel.
In just two months, this project—invested in by Bitfinex (Tether’s parent company), Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Framework, and other top-tier capital firms—has raised nearly $27.5 million, catapulting its valuation to a staggering $500 million.
Why Has Plasma Quickly Become the Market’s New Darling?
Prior to its public sale, the Plasma team released a clear and rigorous set of participation rules. To take part in the XPL token sale, users must first deposit stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, DAI, or USDS into the official vault on Ethereum’s mainnet—the Plasma Vault.
The earlier and longer you deposit, the more “unit points” your account accumulates. These unit points determine how much XPL you’ll be eligible to purchase during the public sale.
This explains why, when the team initially released governance token XPL quotas and allowed users to deposit liquidity, the first $500 million allocation was snapped up within minutes. An additional $500 million deposit cap was then filled within 30 minutes. Even more extreme, some whales spent as much as $100,000 in Ethereum gas fees just to secure their spot in the queue.
So What Makes Plasma So Special?
Plasma’s uniqueness lies in using Bitcoin’s mainnet as its final settlement layer, inheriting the UTXO model’s security, while being fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) at the execution layer—ensuring seamless migration of smart contracts.
Most importantly, all transactions on Plasma can pay gas fees directly in USDT, and standard USDT transfers are completely free.
Beyond cost advantages, Plasma offers two key features: First, native privacy—on-chain transactions are public by default, but users can simply toggle a switch to hide addresses and amounts, with the option to selectively disclose information when needed. Second, Bitcoin liquidity—Plasma brings BTC on-chain via permissionless bridging technology, combined with Tether’s own deep USD liquidity pools, enabling low-slippage swaps and BTC-collateralized stablecoin lending.
How Much Could Plasma Earn Tether Annually?
Although Plasma offers zero fees for USDT transfers, that doesn’t mean it generates no revenue.
Plasma’s bold claim of “free USDT transfers” isn’t funded by Tether’s direct subsidies, but rather through a dual-fee structure that categorizes transactions by complexity and priority. Think of it like “children under 1.2 meters ride free.”
Simple USDT transfers consume minimal block space—akin to “children under 1.2 meters”—so nodes include them in blocks at no cost. However, to prevent spam attacks, Plasma imposes a basic throughput limit. Additionally, users must leave a small on-chain deposit as collateral; if abuse thresholds are triggered, this deposit is automatically forfeited. This preserves the “free” experience while blocking malicious traffic.
More complex operations—such as multi-contract calls, batch liquidations, or institutional-grade instant settlements—are flagged by the system and require payment. The primary income for Plasma nodes comes from these transactions, supplemented by tiny fees from cross-chain transfers and custodial services, giving the network self-sustaining revenue. Because simple transfers are now free, pricing for premium services can be more flexible: current estimates show thousands of free payments per second consume minimal resources, allowing nodes to cover costs and generate surplus from a small volume of high-end transactions.
This mechanism is supported by Plasma’s “dual-layer architecture.” The base layer periodically anchors block states back to Bitcoin, outsourcing security to Bitcoin’s proof-of-work. The upper layer is EVM-compatible, allowing developers to port Ethereum contracts directly. By removing traditional gas calculations, execution efficiency improves significantly. According to Messari’s evaluation report, Plasma’s optimized consensus can handle thousands of payments per second on a single-core CPU during stress tests, with node rewards entirely sourced from complex transactions.
So how does Plasma make money? The answer is now obvious.
First, enterprise “dedicated lines”—cross-border payment firms or game publishers seeking sub-millisecond transaction speeds must enter paid lanes, paying fixed monthly USDT fees to guarantee bandwidth.
Second, smart contracts and batch liquidations—DeFi protocols executing complex logic still pay gas, though priced in USDT instead of ETH.
Third, bridging and custody—transferring assets onto or off Plasma incurs a small “exit tax,” which flows into the Plasma treasury and is distributed to nodes and the foundation according to predefined rules.
Fourth, XPL token inflation—validators stake XPL to earn block rewards, while the Plasma treasury retains a portion to gradually auction, continuously subsidizing 0-gas peer-to-peer USDT payments.
Combined, these four revenue streams not only offset the costs of free transfers but also open an entirely new cashflow for Tether.
If Plasma successfully captures most of the USDT traffic currently on Tron and Ethereum, its first direct windfall would be the bulk of chain fees currently collected by Tron and Ethereum—estimated annual revenue between $1–2 billion. With enterprise services and cross-chain fees, total new income could reach $1.2–3 billion. Plasma may also unlock hidden gains and ecosystem spillovers: attracting major new liquidity and projects, charging certain “taxes”; offering SDKs and enterprise node access, charging commercial fees to dApps, and more.
Even conservatively estimating, given Plasma’s free standard USDT transfers, it could generate around $1 billion in annual revenue for Tether.
Beyond revenue, however, the bigger prize is control. In the past, Tether had to follow Ethereum and Tron’s lead—if they raised fees or changed rules, USDT had no choice but to comply. Infrastructure supporting USDT (settlement, execution, bridging, etc.) was largely outside Tether’s control.
Now, Tether is expanding USDT’s use as a settlement currency and holding BTC as reserves—both converging within Plasma. It’s consolidating the $150 billion worth of USDT scattered across over a dozen networks into a unified settlement layer, where transfers, swaps, and redemptions all happen on Tether’s own turf. Tether will gain greater pricing power and influence, naturally taking control of the network’s revenue gates.
XPL Public Sale Participation Details
As the public sale date approaches, the Plasma team has released detailed participation guidelines.
To join the XPL public sale, users must first deposit stablecoins (USDT, USDC, DAI, or USDS) into the official vault on Ethereum—the Plasma Vault. The system calculates “unit points” based on each wallet’s deposit amount and duration, which ultimately determines guaranteed allocation. Simply put: the earlier you deposit and the longer your funds stay, the more XPL you can buy during the sale.
To prevent whale domination, the team has set a $50 million deposit cap per Sonar account, with a maximum of three wallets linked per account. This means regardless of how many wallets a user controls, their total allocation cannot exceed $50 million. While the overall vault has no hard cap, the team will dynamically manage total deposits, starting with an initial $100 million and scaling based on demand to ensure fair and balanced distribution.
Notably, once the sale begins, users must submit additional stablecoins to actually purchase XPL tokens—balances in the vault won’t be automatically used. If any participant fails to use their full allocation, the leftover tokens will be redistributed proportionally to oversubscribers. This allows users to slightly over-subscribe to increase their chances of receiving extra XPL.
On compliance, all participants must complete strict KYC verification on the Sonar platform—even existing Echo account holders. U.S. users must provide accredited investor certification, and their purchased XPL tokens will be locked for an additional 12 months post-sale. Users from the UK, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Ukraine are ineligible to participate.
Deposited stablecoins will first be 1:1 converted to USDT by whitelisted market makers on Ethereum, then securely transferred to the Plasma network via LayerZero cross-chain bridge technology, stored as USD₮0. After the mainnet Beta launch, users can withdraw both principal and accumulated yield—the process is transparent and fast, typically completed within 48 hours. Deposit receipt tokens are internal vouchers only; any transfer will be treated as early withdrawal. Users are strongly advised against using these tokens in any DeFi activities.
The vault infrastructure used for Plasma’s sale is provided by Veda, already widely adopted and securing over $2.6 billion in assets. All contracts have undergone rigorous audits by top security firms including Spearbit and Zellic, with audit reports to be published prior to mainnet Beta launch, further ensuring fund safety and transparency.
As the public sale draws near, this IDO could reignite market excitement. Most participants believe Plasma is poised to directly challenge Tron and emerge as the new “stablecoin chain king,” making this sale one of the most anticipated events in recent memory.
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