Plasma, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for stablecoins, just launched its mainnet beta and native token XPL today, Sept. 25, as planned, with billions in stablecoin liquidity deployed across major DeFi partners such as Aave, Ethena, Fluid and Euler.
The network, backed by Bitfinex, Bybit, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, American billionaire Peter Thiel and others, is launching with a 10 billion XPL total supply, of which around 1.8 billion XPL tokens are currently circulating at launch, per CoinGecko data.
At press time, XPL is trading around $1, with a market cap of $1.9 billion and a fully diluted value (FDV) of about $10.5 billion.
Hyperliquid’s pre-launch perpetual market was pricing XPL around $0.80, implying a $1.44 billion circulating market cap and an around $8 billion FDV.
XPL is currently trading on major decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and PancakeSwap at approximately $1.05, giving early public sale buyers, who bought XPL at $0.05 earlier this year, roughly 20x returns on their investments.
Centralized exchanges — including Plasma backer Bitfinex, as well as top CEXs by 24-hour volume like Binance and OKX — are set to list XPL for spot trading imminently.
XPL Tokenomics
Plasma’s tokenomics for XPL allocated 10% of token supply to a public sale, which ran in July of this year and ended up being oversubscribed by more than $300 million. The team also set aside 40% of the token supply for ecosystem growth, with 8% unlocked at launch, and 25% each to team and investors under multi-year vesting.
And while around 1.8 billion XPL tokens — or about 18% of the total supply — are evidently available at launch, some of this circulating supply could belong to U.S. sale participants, whose XPL will not be distributed to them until July 28, 2026, for regulatory reasons. The delayed vesting schedule for U.S. participants means that the actual freely tradable supply could be lower.
The Defiant reached out to Plasma to clarify the situation, but has not heard back by press time.
Some note that the valuation could still seem high relative to adoption. Delphi Digital analyst @simononchain explained on X on Sept. 24 that even though Plasma has no live adoption yet, markets often focus on large crypto opportunities like stablecoins.
“Even though presalers in from 500M FDV are already sitting on ~14x at current pre-market levels, there is a decent chance the market frames Plasma as a long-tail way to get exposure to Tether, which is quickly becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies,” the analyst wrote in the X post.
Plasma’s Products at Launch
As The Defiant reported earlier, Plasma will already have several ready-to-use products at launch.
For example, Swarm, a DeFi platform, is launching nine tokenized equities on Plasma, issued under the EU Prospectus Regulation, giving holders legal rights to the underlying securities.
Plasma itself is also debuting Plasma One, which the team described as a “stablecoin-native neobank,” with a spokesperson telling The Defiant that the initial rollout will focus on “regions where there are already large movements of capital, and where there is existing stablecoin penetration, such as the Middle East.”
Disclaimer: This is a developing story and will be updated.
