DeFi Beginner's Guide (Part 4): A Detailed Explanation of Plasma Mainnet Launch, Watering Subsidy Opportunities, Tutorials, and Precautions

2025-09-27 08:50:59

Collection

This article will summarize the opportunities for earning stablecoin yields on the Plasma mainnet, as well as participation tutorials and precautions, from the perspective of a DeFi beginner.

Author: @Web3Mario

Abstract: 20% to 40% APR on stablecoins! No time to explain, seize the opportunity for stablecoin subsidies after the Plasma mainnet launch! This article will summarize the opportunities for stablecoin yields on the Plasma mainnet, participation tutorials, and precautions from the perspective of DeFi newcomers.

Quick Overview of the Plasma Project Background

Just yesterday, September 25, many friends might have seen the wealth effect of XPL on various consulting or social media platforms, which gave its issuer, Plasma, a great start for its TGE. If you missed the early rounds of XPL, don't worry, because after the mainnet launch, Plasma has provided short-term high-yield subsidies for various stablecoin earning scenarios. The author believes these scenarios are low-risk, relatively simple to operate, and offer very objective returns, making them suitable opportunities for DeFi newcomers. Therefore, I will quickly summarize some information and precautions that readers might find useful when participating.

First, let’s briefly introduce the Plasma project. In summary, it is a Layer-1 blockchain with strong backing from investors, specifically designed for stablecoin payment systems, aiming to provide a high-performance, low-cost, and nearly instant transfer experience for dollar-pegged stablecoins (like USDT). Its core selling point is the "zero-fee USDT transfers" mechanism (meaning users do not need to pay additional gas fees when performing standard USDT transfer operations). Moreover, it is EVM compatible, allowing various mature EVM DeFi products to be quickly integrated.

Plasma (XPL) is backed by a powerful lineup of investors, including Founders Fund, Framework Ventures, Bitfinex, and executives from the Tether team, providing both funding and strategic support. Since 2024, the project has completed approximately $3.5 million in seed funding and about $20 million in Series A financing, raising over $370 million during the public offering phase before the mainnet launch for stablecoin liquidity pools, ecological incentives, technology research and development, and security audits. This funding has laid a solid resource foundation for Plasma to build a zero-fee stablecoin transfer network and a broad DeFi ecosystem.

The significance of introducing this is that we can understand that this is a project that is unlikely to encounter problems in the short term and is relatively hot, thus providing good security for assets.

Opportunities, Tutorials, and Precautions for Subsidies During the Cold Start Phase of the Plasma Mainnet

From the GTM strategy perspective, the Plasma project has adopted a high-profile strategy. After achieving a good start for its token TGE, the Plasma team has provided short-term, high-return XPL token subsidies for stablecoin use cases in ecological DeFi projects to maintain the project's momentum and quickly attract funds. On average, most stablecoin earning scenarios can maintain an APR between 20% and 40%. According to information from DeFillama, since the mainnet launch yesterday, the TVL has quickly reached $2.5 billion, and mainstream DeFi projects have gradually launched on Plasma. Moreover, the official subsidy scenarios from Plasma are all centered around these mainstream DeFi protocols, so everyone should try to avoid participating in new, native early projects for now to avoid unnecessary risks.

First, let’s introduce how to discover these investment opportunities. The first key link is the dedicated section for Plasma on the Merkl platform. Merkl is a multi-chain Web3 incentive distribution platform that has allocated over $200 million in liquidity and points rewards for more than 200 protocols, supporting various schemes such as liquidity mining, lending incentives, and airdrops, helping projects efficiently attract and retain users, so safety is not an issue. Plasma has chosen to distribute rewards through the Merkl platform, and you can find all subsidized scenarios at this link:

Link: https://app.merkl.xyz/?chain=9745

It is worth noting that Merkl uses a Merkle Root distribution model for incentives in some scenarios, which means that while rewards accumulate in real-time, they are not immediately claimable. Users may need to actively claim rewards after a certain period. If you are looking for compounding opportunities, please do not overlook this detail.

Next, let’s discuss how to transfer funds to the Plasma mainnet. The cross-chain protocol specified on the official website is stragate.finance. Users can click on the top navigation bar of the official website to access it.

Link: https://stargate.finance/bridge?dstChain=plasma\&dstToken=0xB8CE59FC3717ada4C02eaDF9682A9e934F625ebb

There are four points to note during the cross-chain process:

Plasma uses an EVM-ecosystem-compatible private key system, so your EVM address can be reused in the Plasma ecosystem.
The current Plasma mainnet requires XPL to pay transaction gas fees, so you need to pre-load some XPL into the operating address. It is recommended to purchase some from a CEX, 5 to 10 is sufficient, and withdraw to that address.
The currently subsidized stablecoin asset in the Plasma ecosystem is USDT0, which is a cross-chain stablecoin based on the Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard provided by Tether to LayerZero, pegged 1:1 to USDT. Therefore, you only need to prepare USDT.
Stargate supports cross-chain transactions, so your cross-chain request may not necessarily go through LayerZero; it may also be recommended through other trading paths. The default protocol seems to be Aori, which has significant slippage and fees. Be careful that if you do not actively choose to use the OFT protocol for cross-chain (the OFT method is free), you will incur considerable fees, so please pay attention to this!

Finally, let me introduce some stablecoin-based, low-risk investment scenarios that I believe are very suitable for DeFi newcomers to participate in:

Official Plasma ecosystem stablecoin Lending Vault: This is an official stablecoin vault where users can stake USDT0 to earn official subsidies. The funds provided will be automatically staked into the AAVE USDT0 liquidity pool. Currently, the total TVL of this pool has reached $1,604.64 million, and the current instantaneous yield is 33.78%.

Two points to note:

The current yield of this pool can only be maintained for 3 days, but after 3 days, Campaign #0xffdb will end, and the subsequent yield will depend on how much funding the project team continues to allocate to this pool.
The redemption for this pool has a 48-hour cooling-off period, and the principal can only be withdrawn after the cooling-off period ends.

Key links are as follows:

Reward details: https://app.merkl.xyz/opportunities/plasma/ERC20_CROSS_CHAIN/0xd1074E0AE85610dDBA0147e29eBe0D8E5873a000
Participation link: https://app.plasma.to/

Providing funds to the USDT0 pool in AAVE: The second good opportunity is to directly provide funds to the AAVE USDT0 pool, which will yield 20.42%, of which 3.08% comes from borrower interest payments, and the remaining 17.35% comes from the official XPL token subsidy.

Points to note:

The remaining duration of this subsidy is 6 days, and after it expires, the yield will depend on the official allocation.
Since the official Lending Vault's funds are also fully injected into this pool, and the official Lending Vault has a cooling-off period, in subsequent reward settings, if the official wants to retain the Lending Vault, the yield they allocate must be higher than that of directly depositing funds into AAVE to subsidize the time cost of user funds.
The subsidy portion only calculates the net value of the funds provided by users, meaning that if you have borrowed, this portion will be deducted from the principal calculation, so circular lending is meaningless in this scenario.

Key links:

Reward details: https://app.merkl.xyz/opportunities/plasma/MULTILOG_DUTCH/0xc5a8eda89cc8ef1de7c861be9bcf3ffdbd250627
Participation link: https://app.aave.com/markets/

Providing USDT0 in specified Vaults in Fluid or Euler: From a TVL perspective, Fluid and Euler should belong to the second tier of lending protocols, and compared to AAVE, they have designed more complex functions, so they are slightly weaker in terms of security, but they have also stood the test of time. In these two scenarios, Plasma has also allocated rewards, and the current yields can reach 23.76% and 27.20%.

Key links: