Recently, I keep seeing everyone complaining about Plasma's XPL price. Clearly, the ecosystem benefits are coming one after another, so why is the coin price still stuck around $0.12 and not going up?
It’s been fluctuating sideways every day, making many people wonder if the project team is just talking big. To be honest, I was puzzled at first, but after observing a few more rounds, I realized that Plasma is actually taking a very counterintuitive path: first, extreme internal competition to hone its skills to perfection, and then gradually expanding outward to truly break the situation.
The core logic of Plasma is very simple and straightforward: maximize the efficiency of on-chain capital to the industry's ceiling, making it so that once money comes in, it cannot bear to leave. With the support of Ethena's quotas, Aave's lending market, and USDT's deep liquidity, it creates a particularly smooth closed loop for capital retention and appreciation. The officially claimed ultra-high TPS (which, when running, makes on-chain transfers almost instantaneous), combined with the zero-fee USDT transfer paymaster mechanism, makes it as easy for ordinary people to send USDT as it is to send a WeChat red envelope. The result is a black hole effect for funds: after money comes in, it either continues to earn interest or snowballs in DeFi, with a very low willingness to flow out.
This strategy has almost no competitors in today's DeFi. Other chains are still arguing about gas fees, while Plasma has driven the cost of simple transfers down to zero, maximizing capital efficiency. However, this is just one side of the coin; Plasma's true ambition is to use on-chain efficiency to force off-chain payment scenarios, integrating projects like Rain cards and Holyheld, which may seem radical but are actually calculated. It's not about begging merchants to accept you, but rather creating a rigid demand through profit margins.
Traditional Visa/Mastercard charges merchants a 3% card fee, but Plasma collects payments with zero loss and instant earnings. Merchants can clearly calculate the benefits and will naturally come forward. In the eyes of rational merchants, this isn't about supporting cryptocurrency, but rather a naked cost reduction and efficiency enhancement. The biggest bottleneck right now is that while the on-chain ammunition is ready, the off-chain targets are not yet fully positioned. DeFi depth and liquidity have already exploded, but compliant payment scenarios are still lacking.
Global regulation will be significantly relaxed by 2026, with cryptocurrency payment policies already implemented in places like Dubai. The scale of RWA tokenization is also skyrocketing, all of which are favorable winds for Plasma's expansion. Once the off-chain scenarios are operational, on-chain efficiency can siphon funds from the real world like a wormhole. Compared to those L1 projects that rely on memes to attract attention and cater to gambling instincts, Plasma's path is difficult yet correct, directly addressing the essence of efficiency that capital cares about the most.
Short-term cryptocurrency prices may feel constricted, which is normal, as value is still in the foundational stage and hasn't reached the release phase. Investors who truly understand it find that worrying about price fluctuations is meaningless. Understanding the foundational logic of internal competition and external breakthroughs is key to capturing long-term alpha. If the forcing logic is thoroughly established by 2026, XPL could very likely become the true connector between on-chain and off-chain. Looking back at this period of sideways movement may turn out to be the most comfortable foundational stage.
