The stablecoin-focused Plasma blockchain’s native token, XPL, debuted on major exchanges, including Binance and OKX, on Thursday.
The token drew a price of up to $1.54 in early trading, resulting in a market capitalization of over $2.8 billion. The plasma token has a genesis supply of 10 billion, of which 18% or 1.8 billion is now in circulation.
The Plasma network also debuted with over $2 billion in stablecoin total value locked and an EVM-compatible design.
Use case
XPR serves as the gas token for transactions and smart contract execution, as well as the staking asset that secures the network, and finally, as the reward token for validators.
Plasma allows gasless transfer of stablecoins for end-users. In other words, it allows zero-fee transfers only for simple USDT sends and receives.
However, more complex transactions, such as deploying contracts or decentralized applications, require XPL to be paid as gas, or a portion of stablecoins to be converted to XPL as fees, according to Delphi Digital’s explainer.
Early this week, Plasma launched Plasma One, a stablecoin-native neobank with the aim of providing users with permissionless access to spending, earning, and saving digital dollars.
Tokenomics
XPL is the native token of the Plasma blockchain, analogous to ETH on Ethereum and SOL on Solana. XPL serves as the gas token for transactions & smart contract execution, the staking asset securing the network, and the reward token for validators.
The XPL token has a fixed total supply of 10 billion tokens. Of this, 40%—equaling 4 billion tokens—is allocated for ecosystem and growth initiatives. At launch, 8% of the total supply (800 million tokens) will be unlocked from this ecosystem allocation to support initial activities such as liquidity provision and partnerships.
The remaining 3.2 billion ecosystem tokens will be gradually unlocked monthly over a three-year period to ensure steady liquidity and ongoing development.
Furthermore, 25% of the supply (2.5 billion tokens) is allocated to founders, developers, and employees, who face a one-year cliff preceding vesting, followed by linear vesting over the next two years. Another 25% (2.5 billion tokens) have been allocated to early backers and strategic partners, with the same vesting terms as the team: a one-year cliff followed by two years of linear vesting.
The token follows an inflationary model, with Validator rewards initially starting at a 5% inflation rate, which will decrease each year until it stabilizes at 3%.
Read more: Peter Thiel-Backed Plasma Unveils ‘HotStuff-Inspired Consensus’ For High-Frequency Global Stablecoin Transfers