Last week, I tried to bridge stablecoins across chains, but it took more than 20 minutes to get confirmation because the liquidity pools were broken and the bridge was slow. When builders move a lot of volume, that kind of friction still hurts.
It is like waiting in line at a busy airport security checkpoint to get to the next terminal.
#Plasma works as a separate L1 for stablecoin flows. Under its PlasmaBFT consensus, it puts sub-second finality and zero-fee USDT transfers first, while still being compatible with EVM for DeFi ports. The design limits itself to payment and settlement efficiency instead of general-purpose bloat. $XPL is used as the gas token for non-stablecoin transactions. It also secures a network through staking and validator rewards, incentivizing participation in consensus.
The integration of NEAR Protocol is Intents on January 23, 2026 and linked @Plasma to cross-chain liquidity across more than 25 networks. This made stablecoin swaps easier by removing the need to build custom bridges. On-chain data shows daily fees around $400, still modest, but trending upward as adoption quietly builds in the background.
This is how infrastructure works: it builds slowly, has focused limits, and is useful instead of flashy.
