2026 is not here yet, but the future of stablecoin payments is already unfolding on Plasma. This Layer 1 is not about doing everything or being mediocre in all aspects, but was born from the very beginning for stablecoin settlement—this positioning determines all its design.

Technically, Plasma is fully EVM-compatible (based on Reth) and achieves sub-second finality (PlasmaBFT), but the real killer feature is its native stablecoin mechanism: USDT transfers with zero Gas fees, and Gas fees paid for other assets. It sounds simple, but this completely changes the economics of payments—daily payment costs are reduced to nearly zero.

In practical applications, this logic has already been proven. USDT QR code payments on the streets of Southeast Asia, 150 million merchants in Europe accepting Visa directly through Rain or Oobit cards, cross-border remittances reaching over 200 countries in seconds—these are not just ideas in whitepapers, but real traffic happening. Products like LocalPay and MassPay have completely compressed the profit margins of traditional remittance intermediaries.

In terms of ecosystem development, the integration of leading institutions such as Kraken, Cobo, CoW Swap, and Fluid is not just hype. syrupUSDT has accumulated over 1.1 billion TVL, Plasma-based stablecoin supply and lending ratios on Aave V3 are leading, and the entire ecosystem’s TVL ranks in the second tier of the industry. Institutional-grade lending, MEV-protected transactions, and the high-yield treasury of the euro stablecoin EURØP—all these components form a complete stablecoin financial infrastructure on a single chain.

In short, Plasma is using the focus on "native stablecoins" to turn payment settlement from a marginal function into a core value.