There has been considerable interest surrounding the $XPL token, primarily due to its innovative approach in addressing several persistent pain points commonly encountered by existing stablecoins. This growing popularity is not without merit, as the token introduces a robust framework designed to enhance stability, transparency, and efficiency within the decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape.
Read the article below to learn more about $XPL.
What is $XPL? What are its use cases?
XPL is the native gas token of the Plasma blockchain used for transaction fees, staking and network governance. It also serves as a payments asset within Plasma’s DeFi ecosystem (partner protocols include Aave, Curve, Uniswap, Ethena). Custom gas tokens later allow users to pay fees in stablecoins while retaining XPL as the core gas asset.
What sets PLASMA apart from other Web3 projects?
Plasma is the first Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for stablecoins, designed to support fast, low-cost, and scalable digital dollar transactions. It enables zero-fee USD₮ transfers, unlocking micro-transactions and everyday payment use cases. The network supports custom gas tokens, allowing users to pay transaction fees directly in USD₮ or BTC, and achieves sub-second finality through its high-performance PlasmaBFT consensus mechanism. Plasma’s state is anchored to Bitcoin, providing enhanced censorship resistance and security, while its full EVM compatibility, built on the Reth execution client, allows seamless deployment of existing Ethereum-based applications.
What is the project goal of PLASMA?
Plasma’s goal is to build the global settlement layer for stablecoins, enabling fast, low-cost, and reliable dollar transfers through a Bitcoin-anchored Layer 1 network. In 2025, Plasma introduced Plasma One — targeting launch in Q1 2026 — a stablecoin-native neobank and card that extends this infrastructure to end users. The application provides permissionless access to digital dollars, allowing individuals to save, spend, earn, and send USD₮ within a single platform.
Plasma One’s core functions include the ability to spend directly from stablecoin balances while earning yield, receive cash-back rewards, send USD₮ transfers with zero fees, use cards in more than 150 countries, and complete onboarding with instant virtual card issuance.
The product serves two primary purposes. First, distribution — expanding access to stablecoins in markets with high dollar demand such as Turkey, Argentina, and the Middle East. Second, integration — using the application internally to test and scale Plasma’s on-chain payment infrastructure, which will later be made available to external partners and developers. Together, Plasma and Plasma One aim to provide a unified framework for stablecoin settlement and real-world usage at global scale.
What are the different projects under the PLASMA ecosystem?
Plasma’s ecosystem covers stablecoins, lending, yield products, RWAs, payments, and infrastructure. Plasma’s mainnet consisted of the most blue chip DeFi projects in the history of chain launches attracting Aave, Ethena, Curve, Pendle, Fluid, Euler, and more. After just 10 days, Plasma became the top #5 chain by DeFi TVL.
In parallel, Plasma has onboarded critical payment infrastructure like WalaPay, Noah, and ZeroHash. As well as deep relationships with emerging market payments companies like BiLira, Trust Wallet, Mansa, El Dorado, and others.
History of PLASMA
Plasma was founded by Paul Faecks (CEO) and Arian Soumeh (COO) with the vision of building the global settlement layer for stablecoins - a high-performance Layer 1 network purpose-built to make digital dollars fast, low-cost, and universally accessible. The founding team brings experience from institutions such as Apple, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Imperial College London, combining backgrounds in distributed systems, finance, and large-scale infrastructure design.
Key milestones include a strategic investment from Founders Fund in May 2022 at a $500 million valuation, the public sale via Sonar (Echo) in May 2025, the $1 billion USD₮ vault campaign filled within 30 minutes in June 2025, the public testnet launch in July 2025, and the mainnet and TGE launch in September 2025.
Within the first ten days of launch, Plasma became the fifth largest blockchain by stablecoin supply (~$7 billion) and the third largest for USD₮, following Ethereum and Tron. It was ranked as the fifth largest chain by DeFi TVL (~$8.7 billion) and hosted the second-largest Aave deployment (~$6 billion market size). The network achieved native USD₮ integrations across major exchanges, including Binance, marking the largest DeFi–CEX integration to date. Plasma also reached 1.3 million unique addresses and maintained a fully organic waitlist of around 100,000 users for its upcoming neobank, Plasma One.
These results position Plasma among the leading stablecoin-focused blockchains globally, demonstrating strong network performance, deep liquidity, and strong institutional adoption from launch.
What can we expect from PLASMA this 2025 and the upcoming years?
In September 2025, Plasma launched its mainnet and XPL token following a fully subscribed public sale, bringing over $2 billion in stablecoin liquidity and day-one integrations with major DeFi protocols such as Aave, Curve, and Uniswap.
For the remainder of Q4 2025, the network will focus on integration with both global and regional exchanges and wallets, enabling frictionless, zero-fee USD₮ transfers for last-mile distribution and the onboarding of native and external ecosystem project. In 2026, the focus will shift to the launch of Plasma One, a stablecoin-native neobank and card that will allow users to save, spend, earn, and send USD₮ seamlessly, further expanding Plasma’s role as the foundational infrastructure for stablecoin payments and access.