I have increasingly felt a trend recently:
At the end of a bear market and in the first half of a bull market, people like to chase 'hype';
But what really supports a whole cycle and can endure are often those chains that quietly solidify their infrastructure when not many people are paying attention.
Plasma - quietly gaining traction among developers, but not making a fuss, is that new Layer1.
The deeper you look, the more you will unconsciously nod:
"Oh, this thing really can run, can scale, and can support an ecosystem."
In today's article, I will clarify using 'oral experience + scene pain point analysis':
Why do so many chains have popularity that comes quickly and goes even faster, while Plasma's growth resembles an accumulation of 'fundamental strength'.
One, why have many chains' popularity been so short-lived recently? Because users fear - lag, slow, collapse.
Not to mention how complex the technology is, let’s look at the simplest scenarios from an ordinary user's perspective:
You open a decentralized application, prepare to operate assets, click confirm, and then:
Wait for a long time with no response.
Gas suddenly skyrocketed.
Transaction gets stuck.
Wallet shows pending.
After refreshing, the application loads directly failed.
As long as it happens once, users typically won’t give a second chance.
The common problem with many chains on the market now is:
In order to connect short-term hotspots and crazily attract traffic, but the architecture itself cannot support the real application volume.
So the phenomenon everyone sees is:
Very quick when launched.
As soon as there is project popularity, it starts to collapse.
Community FOMO for a couple of days, the third day speed directly returns to hell mode.
Once the event ends, the ecology falls silent.
What’s more exaggerated is that some chains can be half paralyzed even when the most basic DEX transaction volume surges.
Users are impatient, developers lack confidence.
This is the fundamental reason why many chains 'burn quickly and cool even faster'.
Two, Plasma has done something that many chains are reluctant to do, but is most crucial: making 'carrying capacity' predictable.
The first time I seriously looked at Plasma was from the complaints of several developer friends.
They say: “Now too many chains like to showcase TPS and low fees, but when it comes to deploying a large DAU application, there are all kinds of problems.”
And their reason for being willing to try Plasma is surprisingly simple:
“This chain seems to be genuinely built for long-term ecological sustainability, not for short-term price manipulation.”
During that time, I also tried using it hands-on for a few days.
I found that Plasma's experience has a very special but crucial feature:
Not exaggerated, not gimmicky, not stacking extreme parameters,
But the operation is very smooth, stable, low-latency, and responsive.
And no matter whether you are cross-application, cross-asset, or using DEX, there is no anxiety of 'chain load suddenly exploding'.
From a technical logic perspective, you will find Plasma's design is more like:
Not for TPS but TPS.
Not for the sake of path but path.
Not pulling data for marketing.
It is built for 'long-term carrying of real ecology'.
Developers working in such an environment feel the biggest sensation is:
“I can finally focus on making products, rather than firefighting every day.”
Three, scenario breakdown: for real applications to run, Plasma's advantages gradually reveal themselves.
We can compare a few real scenarios:
1. NFT mint experience.
The most likely breakdown on the chain is 'minting rush'.
But Plasma maintains smoothness even under high concurrency, which shows that it is not just fast, but handles concurrency pressure very steadily.
The result for ordinary users is:
Click once → feedback arrives immediately.
No experience of 'stuck, pending, or being kicked out'.
Gas will not suddenly explode.
User experience is so simple that users even forget they are doing things on the chain.
2. DEX trading experience.
On many chains, transactions during high volatility will:
Stuck passively.
Prompt 'congestion'.
Requires multiple retries.
Transaction fees suddenly increased.
But Plasma's operating logic is more like:
“No matter how the market popularity changes, the experience remains at basically the same level.”
This kind of 'low volatility user experience' is the stability that users and assets need the most.
3. Multi-application switching experience.
Plasma's architecture makes cross-application call costs lower, so you will clearly feel:
From mint → DEX → NFT market → GameFi
The overall process has no obvious delay accumulation.
This is a kind of 'smooth feeling within the ecology'.
And this is precisely where many chains are most likely to break during their growth.
Four, what developers like is: this chain will not suddenly give you a 'backstab'.
I’ve talked to a few friends, and what developers focus on when choosing a chain is actually not the popularity, but:
“Can this chain withstand the explosion of my application?”
Some chains make their infrastructure very fragile to attract traffic:
When there are many events → collapse.
More users → stuck.
Contract calls are slightly complex → memory blows up.
A big player on the chain operates → full network delay.
This is like using a cheap foundation when building a house,
No matter how beautiful the exterior, the house will eventually crack.
And the underlying architecture logic of Plasma has never pursued 'metrics that marketing can understand' from the very beginning.
But rather pursuing the ability to ensure applications can land safely.
A particularly classic quote from developers evaluating Plasma:
“It’s not flashy, it just works.”
Can run, run steadily, run for a long time, that’s the three iron rules of Layer1.
Five, the strongest point of Plasma: long-term ecological growth is 'naturally occurring', not pushed hard by subsidies.
You will find that many chains' ecological growth paths are:
Short-term subsidies → traffic diversion → event ends → user loss → ecology abruptly cools.
This is 'pushed growth', not 'grown growth'.
And in my view, Plasma's ecological route looks more like:
The underlying architecture is stable.
Developers are willing to come.
Applications can run normally.
User experience is smooth.
The ecology begins to self-grow.
This kind of growth does not require burning money forever, nor does it need to rely on hotspots forever.
It is 'structural, endogenous, and compoundable'.
This is the part that many chains cannot achieve.
Six, why is Plasma worth observing in advance? Because it follows the path of 'sustainable routes'.
To summarize Plasma's key value:
User experience is so smooth it becomes imperceptible.
Developers have low migration costs and low landing risks.
Architecture is not a short-term parameter game, but a long-term carrying capacity.
Ecological growth follows an endogenous flywheel, not external force pulling.
Low noise, low public relations, low emotions, but high stability, high scalability, high availability.
In other words:
In the future competition of Layer1, Plasma is not competing with others on 'popularity'.
What it competes on is:
Solid foundation, real applications, sustainable ecology.
In the long run, this kind of route is often the key to victory or defeat.
