I thought Tron would remain unbeatable for stablecoins… then I discovered Plasma

When it comes to stablecoin payments, I always assumed Tron had locked in its dominance. The network effect, the low fees, and the billions flowing through USDT on Tron every single day made it feel untouchable. Then I came across Plasma ($XPL), which was just listed today on Bitget, and it honestly made me pause.

What stood out to me is that Plasma doesn’t just promise faster and cheaper transfers it actually launched with more than $2B in stablecoin liquidity already integrated across 100+ DeFi protocols. Add to that a $24M raise from investors like Founders Fund and Bitfinex/Tether, and you can tell this isn’t just another experimental chain.

From a tech perspective, the fundamentals are also different. Plasma uses PlasmaBFT, a pipelined HotStuff consensus that pushes throughput to over 1,000 TPS with sub-second finality. And the part that really caught my attention is the gasless USDT transfers. Instead of making users worry about holding native tokens for fees, Plasma pre-funds transactions at the protocol level, with rate-limiting to prevent spam. That feels like a very practical step for onboarding mainstream users.

It makes me think: could Plasma realistically challenge Tron and even Solana in the payments arena, or will it just remain a promising alternative that only a niche group adopts? I’ve seen plenty of projects claim to be “the next stablecoin chain,” but most never come close to building traction. Still, Plasma feels like one of the first to actually show up with liquidity, backing, and working mechanics from day one.

Now I wonder will users and institutions be willing to migrate away from the networks they already trust, or is Tron’s grip too strong to break?