Crypto start-up Plasma unveiled technical features of its stablecoin-specific blockchain, promising fast and efficient global stablecoin transfers by employing a “HotStuff-inspired” consensus mechanism.
The HotStuff consensus is an example of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) for blockchains that allows consensus even when some nodes are faulty or malicious. Imagine a group of friends planning a picnic who must agree on a date, location and duration. If the majority agrees, they can successfully move forward while bypassing potential disruptions from a few unreliable friends.
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The HotStuff blockchain consensus mechanism takes this further by allowing seamless leader replacement if the decision-maker or the leader node behaves erratically, thereby reducing delays and improving efficiency.
Besides, in traditional BFT systems, every node sends multiple back-and-forth confirmations, which causes delays. The HotStuff mechanism streamlines the process where a leader node proposes a decision and validator nodes confirm in a single step.
“At its core, Plasma leverages PlasmaBFT, a Fast HotStuff–inspired consensus protocol optimized for rapid finality and low latency, supporting high‑frequency global stablecoin transfers,” Plasma announced on X.
Finality in blockchain means the speed at which transactions are confirmed and added to blocks, following which they become irreversible. Meanwhile, low latency refers to the quickness in processing transactions.
Plasma’s blockchain is purpose-built for tether, the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin with a market capitalization of $144 billion. Tether accounts for over 60% of the total stablecoin market, according to data source Coingecko, and its issuer made $13.7 billion in profits last year. The early backers of the project include prominent industry names like venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino and Split Capital’s Zaheer Ebtikar.
Plasma is designed to be a Bitcoin sidechain with full compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM). Most stablecoin activity happens on smart contract blockchains such as Ethereum, Tron and Solana.
Plasma’s execution layer is built on Rust Ethereum, also known as Reth, a modular engine compatible with the EVM, allowing Plasma to run any Ethereum smart contract.
The stablecoin project also has a built-in bitcoin bridge that uses the same group of decentralized validators as the BFT mechanism and periodically links to updates on the Bitcoin blockchain. This allows Ethereum applications to work easily with Bitcoin, using the latter as the settlement layer.
“By periodically anchoring state diffs on Bitcoin, Plasma achieves seamless interoperability and uses Bitcoin as a settlement layer—delivering permissionless finality, stronger censorship resistance, and a universally verifiable source of truth,” Plasma said.
Steven Lubka, head of Swan Bitcoin said the new stablecoin infrastructure seems to be “betting on the thesis that other blockchains are only good for stablecoins and they need Bitcoin security properties to be inherited.”
Other key features of Plasma include custom gas tokens, allowing fee payments in USDT or BTC, zero-charge USDT transfers and confidential transactions while ensuring compliance.