Plasma's market capitalization exceeded 10 billion on its first day of launch, and the luxurious "pork trotter rice" marketing effect was maximized

The new stablecoin blockchain Plasma achieved a remarkable debut, with its native token XPL experiencing a market frenzy upon launch. Its success is largely attributed to an aggressive airdrop and pre-sale strategy that maximized marketing impact.

Highly Successful Launch: On September 25th, Plasma launched its mainnet and token XPL, which was immediately listed on major exchanges like Binance and OKX. The token's price surged to $1.47, giving it a Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) nearing $12 billion.
Luxurious Airdrop Strategy: A key to the frenzy was a massive airdrop. Notably, all pre-depositors received an equal bonus of over 9,000 XPL (worth over $13,000 at peak), a move that particularly rewarded small-scale investors and created massive buzz.
Massive Profits for Early Supporters: Whales who participated in the public sale, where XPL was priced at $0.05, saw enormous returns. One whale realized a profit of over $11 million, a 19-fold return.
Building Ecosystem with Incentives: Plasma is rapidly building its ecosystem by leveraging high-yield mining incentives on exchanges and over 100 DeFi partners. Its official vault attracted over $1.5 billion in deposits shortly after launch.
Strategic Focus and Ambitions: Plasma strategically targets emerging markets with high stablecoin demand, offering features like zero gas fees to compete with networks like TRON. Its broader ambition includes launching a digital banking service, Plasma One, which will feature a prepaid credit card for global payments.

By Nancy, PANews

It is almost an industry consensus that "the hottest ones will die", but Plasma staged a textbook-level online debut. While winning the "Grand Slam" of exchange launch, its "big money" strategy for pre-sales and community has further increased the popularity.

Luxury airdrop marketing has been fully effective, with FDV reaching tens of billions of dollars.

Thanks to its large-scale airdrop strategy, Plasma triggered a market frenzy on the first day of its launch, and also dispelled the previous negative rumors about the team.

On the evening of September 25th, the Plasma stablecoin blockchain officially launched its mainnet and released its native token, XPL, with an initial circulation ratio of 18%. Subsequently, several major exchanges, including Binance, OKX, and Upbit, announced the listing of XPL almost simultaneously, instantly igniting market enthusiasm.

According to CoinGecko, after its launch, XPL's price soared to $1.47, with a FDV approaching $12 billion. According to Coinglass data, its futures trading volume skyrocketed to $14.93 billion in a short period of time, a daily increase of 1,578%, and open interest also climbed rapidly to $1.48 billion. In the Binance XPL/USDT contract, the long-short ratio among top traders is approximately 3.1, indicating a generally bullish bias among major investors. For example, the largest XPL long position on Hyperliquid has seen a profit exceeding $10 million.

In fact, backed by Tether's reputation, Plasma was snapped up by whales during its previous public sale, even going oversubscribed. According to Dune data, Plasma attracted approximately $1.6 billion in deposits across two rounds, with nearly 5,000 participants. The average deposits in the two rounds were approximately $450,000 and $283,000, respectively. Furthermore, Plasma previously partnered with Binance to hold a $1 billion deposit airdrop, which also sold out instantly.

These frantic buyers also reaped significant rewards from the pre-sale. According to Lookonchain monitoring, whale @RegbilTrades participated in the XPL public sale, spending $571,800 to purchase 11.44 million XPL at $0.05, resulting in a profit exceeding $11 million, a 19-fold return. Whale 0x790c previously deposited 50 million USDT into Plasma, securing a $2.7 million public sale quota and purchasing 54.09 million XPL at an average price of $0.05. This leaves him with an unrealized profit exceeding $47.7 million. Even if participants participated through Binance, according to analysis by @ai_9684xtpa, a single account depositing $100,000 could receive 11,489 XPL, with the highest return exceeding $16,600. PANews has also compiled airdrop data and will fully review the Plasma airdrop data in a subsequent article.

Even more surprising was the "Deluxe Pork Knuckle Rice" airdrop. Plasma reportedly allocated an additional 25 million tokens to all pre-depositors, which will be evenly distributed. This means that regardless of whether a deposit is $1 or $10,000, an additional 9,304 XPL will be awarded, with a maximum value exceeding $13,000. This initiative directly won over retail investors and maximized marketing effectiveness.

Mining incentives leverage the stablecoin ecosystem layout, will it compete head-on with TRON?

It's undeniable that Plasma has played a strong hand since its mainnet launch. After successfully introducing over $2 billion in liquidity through multiple rounds of pre-deposits, Plasma is rapidly leveraging a series of coin-spending incentives to rapidly generate interest in the ecosystem.

On the exchange side, several platforms have simultaneously launched XPL mining, including OKX, which offers a prize pool of 8.8 million tokens, Gate, which offers 3 million tokens, and Bitget, which offers 2.2 million tokens. Plasma has also partnered with over 100 DeFi projects, including Aave, Ethena, Fluid, and Euler. According to data on the Merkl website, XPL mining yields generally range from 10% to 40%, with TVLs ranging from millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. The official Vault has performed particularly well, with deposits currently exceeding $1.5 billion and an annualized yield (APY) of 31.64%.

To mitigate liquidity management risks and strengthen user willingness to lock up their holdings, Plasma has chosen to implement a gradual capital injection and incentive subsidy strategy. According to its DeFi director, River, at the launch of the Plasma mainnet Beta, the team will bridge $1 billion USDT from the Ethereum mainnet and gradually inject it into Aave. However, to avoid market volatility or utilization imbalances caused by a sudden influx of funds, Plasma has chosen to inject funds in batches over five days. During this period, users who deposit funds into the Veda Vault will receive additional XPL rewards; however, withdrawals during the stabilization period will require a 48-hour delay and will forfeit all earnings earned during that period.

As a new L1 public chain, in addition to building on-chain ecological competitiveness, Plasma also strategically focuses on emerging markets with strong demand for stablecoins, such as Southeast Asia, Turkey, South America, etc. Its selling point is a lower usage threshold, including custom gas tokens, zero gas transactions and privacy features. Therefore, it is considered a direct attack on TRON.

Furthermore, Plasma's ambitions for global payments go even further. Recently, Plasma announced the launch of Plasma One, a new stablecoin digital banking service, following the launch of its mainnet beta. This prepaid credit card, issued by Rain, the company behind products like the Avalanche Card, will use the Plasma blockchain as a payment gateway. It aims to enable everyone around the world to save, spend, and earn in US dollars, all within a single, permissionless app. Users can earn while spending, for example, by paying directly from their stablecoin balances while earning over 10% in returns. Spending with any of its Plasma One cards (physical or virtual) can earn up to 4% cash back. Plasma cited its motivation for building Plasma One as a desire to unlock global access to the US dollar and a desire to build technology based on its own infrastructure.

However, what really determines whether Plasma can go further is not just the current high-subsidy TVL and the halo of Tether, but whether it can form a long-term and stable user scale in emerging markets, find a real landing path in real payment scenarios, and withstand the test of supervision.