Plasma is to be fast in the present and safe in the future. It does it by taking the speed of Proof-of-Stake and integrating it with the security provided by Bitcoin.
Plasma finalizes payments in seconds every day, and this is vital in the real world such as retailing or transferring money. No one would like to spend several minutes to verify a payment. Speed facilitates daily and hassle free transactions.
To have long term trust, Plasma pegs its state on Bitcoin via checkpoints. Bitcoin is much assured of its safety and stability, thus employing it provides good settlement assurances in the long term.
This is the intelligent compromise: on a day-to-day basis, plasma flows quick, but on a long-term basis, it becomes solid to make sure of something. It resembles a design whose imperative is move fast now, lock it in at a later time.
The outcome is a system that is appropriate to both normal business and serious financial dependability.
