Evaluating Plasma as a typical public chain often results in conclusions focused on performance, costs, and the number of ecosystems—these general indicators are difficult to explain regarding why stablecoin payments are prioritized and why chain-level fees can be extremely low while still generating considerable fees and revenue on the application side. A more effective perspective is to view Plasma as a stablecoin settlement and credit network, examining it like a payment company in terms of scale, turnover, cost structure, and security budget.
First, look at the scale; the on-chain stablecoin scale is approximately $1.876 billion, with a change of about -6.82% over the past 7 days, and the dominant stablecoin accounts for about 82.08%.
Scale is not a superficial engineering project in payment networks but the foundation. The larger the scale of stablecoins, the more the network can form sustainable interest rate curves, more diverse payment tier products, and stronger market-making depth. However, the quality of scale is equally important. High concentration leads to two results. First, the path is shorter, and the pricing units are more unified, making the experience of small transfers and high-frequency payments easier to resemble internet products. Second, external dependencies are stronger; any changes in rules, channel changes, or risk control strategies targeting the dominant stablecoin will more directly affect the network. Judging whether concentration is an advantage or a hidden danger relies on observation, not opinion. If the concentration is high but the total scale can still rise, and trading behavior resembles daily transfers rather than periodic movements, concentration is more likely to be efficiency. If the concentration is high and the scale fluctuates with activity, with transactions concentrated in a few addresses and a few time windows, concentration resembles a weakness.
Looking at the cost structure. The chain layer's 24-hour fees are approximately $245, while the chain layer's revenue is also approximately $245, which can almost be ignored. In stark contrast, the application layer has 24-hour application layer fees of approximately $294,400 and application layer revenue of approximately $28,000.
This set of data reflects a very clear choice for Plasma: the base layer tries not to charge users, and the true costs and commercialization space are placed in the service layer. It resembles a structure common in the payment industry, where underlying clearing and channels aim for low friction, and value-added services are charged in layers. More importantly, application layer revenue accounts for about 9.5% of application layer fees, indicating that the current stage is still in a cycle of exchanging costs for growth. This is not a judgment of good or bad but a judgment of stage. The key for early networks is not the current profit margin but whether the subsidies can be transformed into retention and reusable channels. If the future proportion of application layer revenue continues to rise, it indicates that the network is moving from the investment phase to the operational phase. If the revenue proportion stagnates for a long time, it suggests that the fees are more like the cost of transient popularity.
The turnover side has also provided some signals. The 24-hour trading volume of decentralized trading is approximately $11.03 million, with a 7-day trading volume of approximately $198.61 million, and a 7-day change of about -7.21%.
Many people will take the rise and fall of transaction volume as an intuitive judgment of project strength, but for payment-type networks, transaction volume is only a part of turnover and is more easily amplified by short-term strategic trading. What is more worth watching is whether turnover can strengthen alongside retention, meaning that funds stay in the network longer, have richer uses, and that transaction behaviors shift from single buying and selling to a combination of transfers, settlements, borrowings, earnings, and consumption. A short-term decline in transaction volume is not fatal; what is fatal is when funds can only come once and leave, and the network cannot turn it into a repeatable behavior.
The core of retention is the credit layer. Aave's real-time data in the Plasma market shows a total supply of approximately $4.71 billion and total borrowing of approximately $1.99 billion, with an overall capital utilization rate of around 42%.
The supply of the dominant stablecoin USDT0 is approximately $2.19 billion, with borrowing around $1.69 billion, and the combined annualized supply and borrowing is around 3.71%, reflecting the result of the interaction between protocol interest rates and incentives.
A more detailed daily snapshot shows that in mid to late January 2026, the supply and borrowing of USDT0 fluctuated around $2 billion and $1.7 billion, with interest rates relatively stable.
For Plasma, this is more critical than just the trading volume. If a payment network lacks a credit layer, the stablecoin balance resembles one-time channel funds. Once the credit layer is established, balances can become account funds, encouraging users to keep them in the network and switch between earning and payments. A capital utilization rate stable above 40% means that credit demand is not merely a facade, and the network is closer to being operational.
The project's operational thinking regarding the credit layer is also worth noting. Public disclosures show that Plasma committed an equivalent of about $10 million in XPL incentives when deploying Aave, and within 48 hours of the mainnet launch, Aave's deposit scale reached $5.9 billion, peaking at approximately $6.6 billion during a certain period, and the dominant borrowing rate remained relatively stable even when TVL fluctuated significantly, while also mentioning the demand breadth reflected by a market utilization rate of approximately 42.5%.
The key here is not how high the peak is but whether the growth method has begun to shift from merely piling deposits to piling borrowings and turnover. What payment-type networks truly need is not to lock money up but to allow money to flow within safe boundaries in high quality.
Next, let's talk about XPL. Many discussions about tokens can fall into the trap of short-term prices and emotions, but for a network like Plasma that keeps chain layer fees extremely low, XPL's long-term role is more akin to a unified vehicle for safety and growth budgets. In the token economy arrangement, the initial supply is 10 billion tokens, with 10% for public sale, 40% for ecology and growth, 25% for the team, and 25% for investors. In public sales, non-U.S. participants unlock at the launch of the mainnet test version, while U.S. participants have a 12-month lock-up period and will be fully unlocked on July 28, 2026. In the ecology and growth portion, 800 million tokens are immediately unlocked at the launch of the mainnet test version, while the remaining 3.2 billion tokens are released monthly over three years.
Regarding inflation and safety budgets, the disclosed mechanism shows that validator rewards start at an annualized 5% and decrease by 0.5% each year until a long-term baseline of 3%, and inflation will only activate after external validators and delegated staking are launched, while also adopting a basic fee burning mechanism similar to EIP 1559 to hedge against long-term dilution.
Putting these together will yield a more pragmatic judgment framework. Short-term supply pressure mainly comes from the unlocking rhythm and ecological deployment pace, medium-term support comes from whether the demand for staking and safety budgets can absorb the new supply, and long-term depends on whether service layer revenue can form a clearer value return and governance right premium.
To make the pricing anchor more specific, we can use the latest on-chain scale comparison for an intuitive validation. Currently, the market capitalization of XPL is approximately $26 million, and the fully diluted valuation is approximately $125.9 million, while the on-chain stablecoin scale is about $187.6 million. In comparison, the market capitalization is approximately 13.9% of the stablecoin scale, and the fully diluted valuation is approximately 67.1% of the stablecoin scale.
This is not a conclusion in itself but a reminder that pricing discrepancies will concentrate on one question: can Plasma convert the stablecoin scale into sustainable service revenue and safety budgets, and whether this conversion will form a stronger binding with XPL? If the binding strengthens, the valuation is more like infrastructure equity. If the binding is unclear, the valuation resembles the volatility of emotional assets.
The progress of real-world payments determines whether growth can move from on-chain to off-chain. On January 9, 2026, the card issuing and payment infrastructure company Rain announced integration with Plasma, supporting card projects initiated by partners built on Plasma, converting stablecoin balances into offline consumption capabilities, and emphasizing its ability to cover a large merchant acceptance network and multi-chain management characteristics.
This type of collaboration truly addresses the last mile problem. The main bottleneck for stablecoin payments is often not the on-chain confirmations but the efficiency of compliance, risk control, issuing, clearing, and acquiring processes. For Plasma, low on-chain fees are just the starting point; transforming balances into usable consumption and transfer habits is the endpoint of the network effect.
In summary, my stage judgment on Plasma leans more towards an operational perspective. It already has three hard indicators of support: the scale of stablecoins has reached the billion-dollar level, the supply and borrowing of the credit layer have reached the level of several billion dollars, and the chain layer fees are extremely low while the application layer has shown a considerable fee and revenue structure.
The most critical verification points for the next year are also very clear. First, whether the stablecoin scale can maintain or grow after changes in deployment intensity. Second, whether the utilization rate of the credit layer can remain stable under controllable risks and synchronize borrowing demand with actual turnover. Third, whether the proportion of application layer revenue can continue to increase and gradually diversify into various services, allowing the network to transition from subsidy-driven to operation-driven. If these three points are gradually realized, the long-term anchor of XPL will be more solid; volatility will still exist, but the pricing basis will be clearer.
