Author: momo, ChainCatcher
Under the stablecoin wave, the stablecoin-specific chain Plasma recently completed a $500 million public fundraising.
Plasma originally planned to raise $50 million, but within minutes of opening staking, deposits reached the $500 million subscription limit, attracting over 1,100 wallets, with a median staking amount of $35,000.
According to crypto analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, one address even spent around $100,000 in gas to become the first Plasma deposit address.
Why was Plasma's $500 million quota quickly "bought out"? What are the characteristics of Plasma's stablecoin-specific chain? This article provides a brief overview of the project.
Deeply Bound with Tether, with a Strong Investment Lineup
In just over half a year, Plasma has completed three rounds of financing, with a powerful investment lineup.
l In October 2024, Plasma announced completing a $3.5 million round led by Bitfinex, with participation from Manifold Trading, Anthos Capital, Karatage, Split Capital, and Christian Angermayer.
l In February 2025, Plasma announced another financing round of $24 million led by Framework Ventures. Bitfinex continued to participate, and attracted notable investors including Tether CEO & Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino, along with Mirana Ventures, Cumberland DRW, Flow Traders, Bybit, IMC Trading, Karatage, Nomura Holdings, and Cobie.
l In May 2025, Plasma announced strategic investment from Founders Fund, the venture capital firm of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Notably, Bitfinex, closely associated with Tether, and Tether CEO & Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino both participated. Plasma's collaboration with Tether goes far beyond financial support.
Tether enjoys free transaction and whitelisted gas payment privileges on Plasma, while Plasma supports USDT0—Tether's cross-chain version, helping USDT achieve seamless transfers between different blockchains.
What Are the Characteristics of Plasma's Stablecoin-Specific Chain?
Previously, the market saw numerous specialized chains for gaming, social, and AI applications, but few "dedicated chains" for high-frequency stablecoin transactions. Plasma has seized this market gap, dedicated to creating a stablecoin-specific chain.
Plasma's core goal is to optimize stablecoin transaction experience, with key features primarily in the following aspects:
Zero-fee USDT Transfers. This feature is designed specifically for USDT payments, allowing users to choose a slightly longer wait time for free transfers.
Anchored to Bitcoin Network Security. Plasma did not choose to build on Ethereum or other general-purpose public chains, but instead built a Bitcoin sidechain to anchor state roots to the Bitcoin network, inheriting its decentralization and high security, eliminating single points of failure, and providing trust-minimized stablecoin settlement.
Customizable Gas Tokens. Users can pay transaction fees using authorized tokens like USDT or BTC without holding Plasma's native gas token XPL. The off-chain system automatically converts at market price to XPL, simplifying user operations.
High Throughput and Low Latency. Plasma uses the PlasmaBFT consensus mechanism (based on Fast HotStuff evolution), supporting thousands of transactions per second with low end-to-end latency, meeting stablecoin high-frequency trading needs.
100% EVM Compatibility. Plasma supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to seamlessly deploy Ethereum smart contracts without modifying code to build stablecoin-related applications.
Additionally, Plasma is also researching privacy transaction features to enhance user privacy protection by hiding transaction details without compromising compliance.
Team Background and Latest Developments
Plasma's founder Paul Faecks is also the CEO and co-founder of another institutional investor DeFi platform Alloy. Paul Faecks previously worked at Deribit and graduated from the Technical University of Munich.
Plasma CTO Hans was previously the CEO of Layer1 Topl, graduated from UC Irvine, and holds a master's and doctoral degree in computer science from Arizona State University.
In terms of progress, Plasma plans to launch the mainnet Beta version in the second quarter of 2025, which will introduce DeFi services around stablecoins such as lending and trading.
In terms of ecosystem collaboration, Plasma has established strategic partnerships with protocols like Ethena, Aave, Morpho, Curve, and Maker.
