I still remember that moment when I was so embarrassed I wanted to dig a hole. I enthusiastically pulled my friend to experience Web3, hand-in-hand teaching him how to download a wallet, and transferred 100 USDT to him so he could feel the magic of on-chain payments. But what happened? He couldn’t send it out, and the wallet popped up a message: "Missing ETH."

A cold shower. My enthusiasm was instantly extinguished.

Think about it, for someone used to Alipay’s one-click transfers, this logic is almost counterintuitive — I want to spend money, so why do I have to buy another type of coin as "gas fee" first? This barrier is like an invisible wall, blocking countless people who want to go on-chain. It wasn’t until I encountered Plasma, especially its Paymaster mechanism, that I truly understood what it means to break the deadlock.

It’s not just a technical upgrade, but a sharp tool that removes the hurdle beneath users’ feet.

What does Plasma, a Layer 1 network built specifically for stablecoin settlement, do with the Paymaster? Simply put, it’s a "cost-shifting magic." Gas fees don’t disappear out of thin air — blockchain’s computational resources always have costs, and XPL, as the underlying fuel, still needs to be burned. But the clever part here is: protocols, applications, or specific liquidity pools can pay on behalf of users. When I click send USDT in my wallet, the backend Paymaster contract silently settles the XPL fees required by validators for me. The only thing visible on the screen is a pure transaction, with no mention of any fees.

This is true user-friendliness.