The market has entered a turning point. The era of "telling stories well to win" is fading, replaced by a competition of "who is less likely to fall."

Recently, I revisited Plasma and its related projects. The trigger for this idea was not the price increase or popularity, but a review I was doing—reordering existing infrastructure solutions based on their "survivability." The result was quite interesting, and Plasma was singled out by me.

**What is the true dimension of competition?**

Most people, when discussing scalability solutions, habitually compare metrics like TPS, interaction speed, and technological frontier. But from the perspective of having experienced multiple rounds of "tech star extinction," I now care more about three more fundamental issues:

First, in emergency situations, will the system crash directly? Second, when problems occur, do users have to rely on the project team to resolve them? Third, in the event of malicious behavior, can bad actors run away smoothly?

These three points may seem far from technological innovation, but they are precisely determined by the system's underlying architecture. The so-called "advanced or not" difference is often less important than whether the architecture can check and balance each other.

**The restraint philosophy of Plasma**

The Plasma solution embodies a high degree of restraint in its architecture. It does not insist on pursuing "real-time finality," but calmly admits that "some people will inevitably act maliciously," and even assumes extreme scenarios like "users may go offline."

At first glance, this sounds pessimistic, but it is precisely the mindset a long-term system should have. When you consider the worst-case scenarios in your design, the system's robustness is fundamentally guaranteed.

**First impression of XPL**

When reviewing related project designs, XPL gives the impression that it is not at all tailored for a short-term bull market. Many projects can be immediately identified as "designed for the bull market"—short-sighted, seeking immediate flashy data.

XPL's design philosophy points toward something more long-term. Although this difference is subtle, it can determine life or death at critical moments. A system designed for the long term tends to be more stable during market corrections; the opposite is also true.

When the market is filled with projects pursuing "fast, new, flashy" features, those that seem "conservative" often end up as survivors.