Many people have a question the first time they hear about XPL: Since Plasma focuses on stablecoins, what use does XPL have?
Stablecoins are 'money', while XPL is more like the 'fuel + deposit + power certificate' that allows this system to run. The design concept of this chain is very clear—daily transactions should use stablecoins as much as possible, the lower the cost the better, and the experience should resemble traditional payments as closely as possible. Therefore, you will see that ordinary USDT transfers can be gas-free, and users may not even feel the existence of the chain.
So where is XPL? It mainly operates in the 'background.' First of all, network security cannot be separated from XPL. Plasma uses a staking mechanism; nodes that want to participate in accounting and block production must first stake XPL. The more you stake, the greater the responsibility, and the less likely you are to act recklessly. This essentially ties the 'cost of wrongdoing' directly to XPL; the more important the chain, the more real the demand for XPL.
Secondly, once complex operations begin, XPL comes into play. For example, calling smart contracts, engaging in DeFi, running interactions that require computational resources, all of these still consume XPL. In other words, stablecoins are responsible for 'daily circulation', while XPL is responsible for 'system operation', with a clear division of labor between the two.
Speaking of the economic model that everyone is concerned about, XPL has a total supply limit and is not of the infinite printing kind; the release is also staged. A portion is used to support the ecosystem, a portion is allocated to the team and early participants, and the overall pace is relatively restrained. Moreover, during the network operation, there will also be fee destruction, which acts as a buffer for long-term supply and demand. In the future, if the usage of Plasma's stablecoin really takes off, XPL will have another layer of value—governance. Who decides how to adjust parameters? How upgrades are implemented? Where resources are allocated? It is highly likely that XPL will still have the final say.