The "Gas Token" Problem
Before Plasma, if you wanted to send $10 in USDT on most networks, you often had to own a completely different coin (like ETH or BNB) just to pay the transaction fee. This is a massive headache for regular users.
It was created to support zero-fee $USDT transfers. By using a "Paymaster" system, the network allows the transaction to happen without the user needing to hold a separate gas token for simple payments.
High-Speed Payments (Not Just DeFi)
Existing blockchains often suffer from "congestion." If a big NFT drop happens on Ethereum, your simple grocery payment might take 10 minutes to confirm and cost $20 in fees.
Plasma uses a custom consensus engine called PlasmaBFT. It was created to provide "sub-second finality," making it fast enough for real-world merchant checkouts and point-of-sale systems.
Bridging to Bitcoin Security
The creators (led by Paul Faecks) wanted the speed of a modern Layer-1 but the trust of Bitcoin.
Plasma was created with a trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge. It anchors its data to the Bitcoin blockchain, effectively "borrowing" some of Bitcoin’s security to protect stablecoin transactions.
