In this exclusive post-launch interview, The Rollup sits down with Paul, the 26-year-old co-founder of Plasma, just days after what many are calling the most successful blockchain launch of the year. Following an intense week that saw Plasma's mainnet go live with unprecedented community participation and viral token distribution mechanics, Paul reflects on the exhausting but rewarding journey from zero to launch. Despite looking tired from the whirlwind week, Paul is energized to discuss Plasma's vision as the definitive stablecoin infrastructure layer, their innovative approach to yield sustainability, and why he believes global commerce will eventually move on stablecoin rails. From the strategic partnership with Tether and the upcoming Plasma 1 neobank app to the competitive landscape against payment giants like Stripe and Visa, this conversation reveals the ambitious roadmap of a team that views their successful launch not as a destination, but as day one of building the future of internet money.

Source: How Plasma Plans To Win The Trillion Dollar Stablecoin Battle - CEO Paul Faecks

Host: Andy & Robbie from The Rollup

Guest Paul Faecks, Cofounder & CEO of Plasma

Paul's Post-Launch Reflection

Andy: Here we go with Paul. Welcome. Good to see you.

Paul: I don't know. Like I'm looking at my own video and I do look quite tired, but it's good to see you guys, man.

Andy: Talk to us about the last couple days, man. How's it been?

Paul: It's been intense. I mean, the entire week was intense, right? Because there's so many moving pieces involved in launching a chain, not launching a network because in the end you're dependent on like so many external variables that are not fully within your control. And so it's been a very intense week. Knock on wood, so far everything has gone well. And we're very happy, but I mean everyone was quite exhausted yesterday night for sure.

Andy: Yeah, man. Well, the most strenuous part seems to be by you now. Is that how you're thinking about this?

Paul: No, not at all. I think the most strenuous part is ahead of us now. I mean, we announced the Plasma 1 product obviously pre-launching the chain and working on that and it feels like I mean this is now basically like the beginning of actually truly building what we've always set out to build. And obviously the chain and the DeFi ecosystem and the exchange component and all of that is a massive component, but god we have a lot of things to do in the next years.

Andy: Paul, how old are you again?

Paul: I'm 26. Yes.

Andy: Yeah. Just like me. Crazy man. Well, congratulations. We know the struggles that happen in mainnet launches. It's not easy. We'll throw you some confetti. We want to kind of understand your vision going forward, how you're thinking about the product line, how you're thinking about the chain. Obviously, there's a lot of activity on plasma already due to the pre-deposit setup. And I think one thing before we kind of move too far looking ahead, why did you guys decide to do the structure around this kind of like XPL allocation to people who deposited that has gone viral? The whole if you did $1 into the chain, you got $10,000. Now obviously people didn't do that exact thing and scale but a lot of people got rewarded and I think you avoided a lot of the FUD that comes with these kind of mechanisms. How did you guys pull that off and why did you guys choose this way to kind of reward the plasma community and the plasma collective?

Paul: Sure. I mean I think for us and I think this is somewhat in line with how we've operated generally right where I mean the public sale on like very clear very kind of transparent kind of parameters basically anyone could participate and for us it's been important to kind of go to market in a capacity where like participation is possible basically. I mean Nathan, who you also know extremely well, who's kind of leading the stable coin collective side of things, who's been absolutely killing it on that, by the way. And like I think we've always wanted to like in the end this is a massively community-driven effort, right? Well, like a stable coin chain specifically is something that you want people to be excited to use and you want to like actually like it needs to be grassroots basically for it to truly work and have value. And I think the decisions that were made on kind of token allocation and token distribution I think fall within that ethos basically.

Andy: Well, I hope it's a consensus that this has been the best launch of the year, if not the cycle. So, a little pat on your back for the efforts. And I think people were excited about seeing the rewards come in and being like, "Okay, cool." Like, they actually thought about strategically how to kind of keep even let's call it like the smaller fish happy and keep people wanting to be a part of the network. Let's talk about some of what's actually happening on the chain right now.

Yield Sustainability on Plasma

Andy: There's some amazing yields on Athena USD. There's looping going on. There's XPL rewards. I think the main thing people want to know is where are the best places to get yield on plasma now kind of how does that ecosystem looking? I just kind of gave some answers there with ALF or with athena. And then I mean my question is kind of like how are you thinking about the sustainability of the yields on plasma with regards to XPL token rewards? How do you want to kind of turn this into something where this isn't just like a farm and dump scenario. This is a kind of a longer term community who wants to participate in DeFi on plasma. So maybe you could just unpack the kind of current happenings and how you're thinking about it.

Paul: Sure. Absolutely. I think that's a very valid question, right? I mean, I think you do have plenty of examples of these kind of very large private deal TVL for higher massive default DT5 kind of pre-committed TVL and then kind of nothing happens. And I think we're very conscious of that and entire complexity of it. I think for us we always know that like distribution is absolutely key to actually getting basically omnipresence which you need omnipresence as a stable coin network right because I mean the word network is like you need as many nodes in the network as possible for it to have value right I think one thing that actually people may have missed because it was right before launch is our kind of pretty substantial and expanded Binance earn partnership where users in Binance which we're doing together with a who we love working with and they're valued and fantastic partners of ours and I mean Binance has 280 million users and they can now deposit into a on plasma basically straight on exchange which I think for us is a massive unlock and so in general we're looking for ways to kind of get to very large scale distribution to kind of make onchain money markets basically usable for anyone that kind of sees value in it. And I think that to an extent you need to kind of branch out from just the cryptonative mercenary pharma community because that doesn't scale infinitely well and then they're quite fickle and then so you can't really build an entire strategy just around that and then so that's something we spend a lot of time on.

Paul: Something that actually sorry I don't want this to seem like I'm answering a fully different question than to bring this back to Plasma DeFi and how and why it's sustainable. I think a big component of that obviously is you need true organic usage, right? that isn't paid for and that isn't just pure incentive farming, but you do need wide distribution and kind of real demand to use the chain to an extent and so I think that is something we've done pretty well at and it's something we continue to be very focused on.

Replicating Plasma's Success

Andy: It's been a unique strength like this is something that chains go live and they launch their token then they start thinking about their ecosystem they start using their token as a way of incentivizing liquidity you guys were able to do that before the token launched it I guess what did you guys have that others don't and the best team in crypto and so that's a moat like my next question was do you expect other teams to now try and replicate that But they can't get your team.

Paul: Yes. I mean, look, I would hope so. But otherwise I would need to have some certain conversations. But in the end, I truly believe that we have a truly incredible team. And I think whoever I name here wouldn't do kind of because I couldn't name everyone basically. But I mean specifically Lucid who's the best crypto co on planet earth and Nathan is fantastic and Vinnie is killing it and like I'm sorry I'm starting to name people here because I'm definitely going to miss some but I truly think that is a massive massive moat. And I think having incredibly sharp, very long-term oriented people that actually kind of want to build something of value, I think is truly the greatest moat any company can have.

Andy: Beautiful, Paul. Well, Paul, then on that note with regards to thinking about how others are playing in this game, I had Jeremy Allaire on the show last week and we were talking about how circles think about ARC and their chain as well as just the broad USDC distribution strategy. There are now, several other players from the likes of Stripe, from the likes of Circle, from, also within Tether that are trying to basically attempt to be this stable coin transfer layer for the world. I mean, when we look at comps, we're thinking about Visa, we're thinking about some of the largest payment processors in the world who have market caps of, 50 plus billion dollars and, process trillions a day. And so when I was talking to Jeremy about it, he thought about this in the lens that he wants USDC to be everywhere. He wants it to be in every in the same way that Netflix is on smart TVs, smartphones, smart, fridges. He wants USDC to be everywhere. Now I assume Paulo clearly has that same philosophy and has executed on it extremely well in a global setting. when it came to ARC and the chain thought process, he mentioned that he looks at this as the evolution of kind of web 2 technology where you can use Google Chrome on your Apple computer. You can use it on your Apple TV, you can use it on your iPad, you can also use a streaming service on a LG TV or a Samsung TV or a Google Chrome Chromebook can use Apple products etc. So he kind of made this analogy about how these are kind of going to blend together into this whole broader like landscape of this tech stack and he had this really grow the pie mentality. So I want to pass it to you. When you're thinking about this stable coin chain wars, if you will, how are you thinking about the competitive landscape when it comes to plasma being the category leader, being the first to market, what is your edge and why in the scope of this kind of grow the pie mentality, do you feel like plasma is going to contribute heavily?

Stablecoins are the Inflection Point

Paul: Sure. I mean it's a complete meme to say this but I think stable coins are kind of truly at the beginning an inflection point to an extent right but I think I mean you now have 260 270 billion in outstanding stable coins we say trillions a lot I think that is going to be trillions and so I think like you do have a kind of massively expanding pie and so I truly think that like the vast majority of stable coin growth is basically in the future and not in the past. And I think that's kind of a massive component of how we think about competition. It's changed a lot how we think about that, right? Because I mean for us when we started the question wasn't basically how are you going to compete with Stripe? But the question was basically why does any of what you're doing here make sense basically and why would stable coins need a chain and why is this interesting and just use Ethereum? And so it's been very gratifying to see how the perception of what the competitive forces we have to deal with how that has changed and I think that reflects reality right but I mean we do now compete with Stripe which is one of the largest payment companies in the world and I think in the end I think we're going for different things and I think that there's kind of different approaches here and so I think that's probably kind of I don't actually even think super competitive with tempo directly. And so I think it's going to be an absolute kind of war to really win this at massive scale and no one has. I truly I don't think Ethereum and Tron have won at scale because I think what at scale means now I think won't mean at scale in two three four five years basically. And so, I do think you will have stable coin chains with hundreds of billions of stable coins, on them and like truly kind of trillions moving every day. And I think that is the future we're building for. And then so we try not to get into the kind of pettiness of oh, what is Tempo doing? What is Codex doing? What is I have deep respect for those teams. I think they're very sharp and I think that they're going after different things to an extent.

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Andy: Introducing extended exclusively on Stark, a nextgen ps trading platform live today with 50 plus trading pairs from crypto to tradi. You get the best experience on chain today. Deposit in the community vault for attractive returns EMD compatible and engage in unified margin spot trading lending and per trading. Another step function change in has been the in the competitive forces that you're describing has been the acceptance of trillions and this is part of the US government having to finance their debt essentially and leveraging stable coin companies as a way and a means to issue that debt. And so it's been the acceptance now that stable coins will reach trillions in circulating supplies.

Stablecoin Saturation Market Impacts

Andy: I'm curious more generally, what are the knock-on effects of an ecosystem that has trillions of stable coins? There's been guys like Arthur Hayes that have kind of equated this to some massive multiples in some DeFi applications, but more specifically to some of the DeFi apps that are on plasma and the way in which you're seeing these competitive forces evolve, how do you think the landscape will change and what will it look like? what's the point A point B between now and that trillions state which isn't I'm not even going to call it an end state because it'll probably grow from there but that being point B how do you think that landscape shifts from where it is today?

Paul: Yeah, I think that's a pretty complex question. I'm saying it involves kind of so many layers of change in the end. I have very strong conviction that like the world you describe is going to come into reality basically and I think we're very focused on that. I think the path to that is going to be a complex one to navigate. I mean, especially in the US, I think there's a realization how important stable coins are strategically as a country, right? I mean, you have Scott Besson talking about stable coins kind of being one of the key strategic components of global USD monetary policy basically because you do need someone who's just a price indifferent purchaser of your debt. And so I think I can go into a 30 minute rant here on like how this all is connected to global politics and USD strength and I'm going to sound like a conspiracy theorist. But I do think that is reality and I think stable coins actually do solve a lot of issues and provide a lot of unlock in many places and the market seems to take that as a given. Now I think my question more specifically is how does that affect the onchain landscape as these things become more and more integrated?

Paul: Sure. I think the lines just get blurry, right? I mean, you're seeing this. I mean, it's been funny because I mean the two things have kind of been multi-year memes that hadn't really happened until I think kind of recently, which is on one hand the institutions are coming. And on the other hand, the kind of DeFi mallet of like CFI in the front and DeFi in the back. And I think both have kind of been talked about for probably I mean five, six, seven like I've spent all of my life in crypto. So like I'm time time I've lost perception of time but I do think both of those things are now very very kind of happening in a very real way. And you're seeing that I mean Coinbase now has a heel product that kind of routes to an onchain product and Binance now does w with us and together. And I think you'll see more of those types of things where I think you'll have kind of centralized kind of trades that are powered by onchain processes in the back. And I think that is also truly where the unlock is where I think you'll have of a mix between onchain only and then kind of the combination of tradi and onchain and so that's something we're quite focused on kind of getting right as plasma.

Andy: Yeah. No, I mean I definitely think that's the right way to think about it and that's probably why you guys really put a lot of effort into thinking about this plasma one product, right? Because when you've got this idea of, what's great about this is that it's unsexy. It's stable coins. It's crossborder payments. It's banking the unbanked. It's giving people access to a strong US dollar across the world when they need it the most. And crypto is really kind of coming together around these use cases. Again, as we were as we were promised in 2017, I know you were around then. That that's what we were all focused on.

Paul: But I think that the kind of the core tenants of I think why crypto has value. I think permissionless money is very high up on that list and I think it just took a bit longer than most people expected but I think it's happening now.

Andy: So let's talk to us about the plasma 1 app and the neo bank. What is the vision here? If you could go out five years from now and read a headline about plasma 1 app what would that headline say? What's the vision here for this app? How do you want to execute this?

Paul: Sure. I think stable coins as kind of a core rail are the kind of perfect tech stack to build something consumer facing and very tangible around and for us on one hand is obviously a kind of distribution wedge and on the other hand it kind of truly I think makes for a meaningfully better just user experience for someone that's using financial tooling. I mean, as a longtime user of stable coins myself, and I mean, I live in systems that actually have pretty robust banking, right? And that have kind of actually relatively fantastic access to financial technology and all of that, but I think that isn't true in the majority of the world. And so I think you can build kind of a meaningfully better experience than on chat banking rails if you build things on stable coins. And so that is why we're building plasma one to an extent also to kind of show what's possible with stable coins. I mean we work with lots of fantastic companies that are building on top of plasma themselves and we don't like we're not looking to not do that, right? because I think that has immense value obviously and so it's also a just kind of very tangible example of like oh you can build truly incredible kind of products on stable coin rails as the core obviously using plasma.

Andy: Could you say a bit more about this distribution wedge because I think I understand the concept but I haven't quite heard anyone frame it in the way that you just did maybe you could explain that concept a little bit and how you guys are applying it

Plasma's Distribution Wedge

Paul: Sure absolutely I think in the end I mean we're building a stable coin chain and that is highly dependent on network effects. You need to be omnipresent and you need to basically have extremely wide reach from the B2B angle to the B2C side of things. you basically need that's actually something that Ton Tron excels at or has excelled at is kind of getting true enduser distribution and so that is something that's critical for us to get right and for us that is like the path to get there is to have something very tangible to actually use plasma itself basically and plasma one is that's at least a component of why we are building plasma one.

Andy: Yeah, it would you say another part of it is around the UX of Plasma's chain. The way that it was designed is theoretically and practically far superior to that of a typical crypto UX from the Plasma 1 app user base. Because if I'm thinking about users in Turkey, in Syria, in Brazil, Argentina, a lot of, Tether's target markets where that's quite dominant as far as USDT being the, the stable coin. these people aren't going to be wanting to deal with seed phrases and wanting to be dealing with all these different approvals and the they want free transfers. They want to be able to send it to their family easily seamlessly and also safely. Like, there's a part of it where they want privacy and they want to, there's a beauty in maybe being able to like pull back funds. Like, I know that's not exactly how blockchains work, but the traditional payment system has some advantages. maybe the UX and part of the app design is going to be, very much focused on that or, I'm no 100%. I mean, I think you're you're a fantastic Plasma One pitch. got I'm in full support of this.

XPL Token Value Accrual Plans

Andy: All right, so Paul, I want to talk some comps. I know we just got a couple minutes. I think Visa is trading at, in 50 60 billion. I think if you look at some of the other payment processors handling trillions, they're up there. People are curious about how XPL is going to have some sort of value accrual is going to be able to be a active force in the network. A lot of people are excited about revenue and buybacks right now. That's kind of probably a flash in the pan, but still we can see that the crypto economic systems are evolving and I think frankly for the better. And so I'm not asking about, where XPL is going to go or just more about how you're thinking about it. How is XPL going to be a sustainable asset that people who want to comp to circle comp to other public stocks as well as public companies, and they look at XPL as the best way to get stable coin exposure. These are my words, not yours, not financial advice. How do you think about actually making that a reality for your XPL holders? What do you have to say to them here today?

Paul: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, that is something we've thought about a lot. It's I think for us it's very clear that like in the plasma economy XPL has to play a very central role because I think you don't want the kind of uniswap asks is a situation right where you have like a confusing amount of entities that like each accrue some value and like no one kind of truly knows I think that is in the end not kind of the correct path to take there's a lot of complexity in this obviously and it's something we've spent a lot of time on and we'll kind of elaborate more on publicly as well and so it's somewhat tough for me to kind of give a very clear very straight answer. But I think that the one thing that like for us and I mean we've kind of built this entire system in a very community aligned way, right? And I think we will continue to do that and I think that obviously also as a kind of central tenant of those kind of needs to involve the XPL token.

Plasma's Partnership with Tether

Andy: Beautiful. I got one last thing for you and I think Rob might have something as well. Paulo put a tweet the co-founder of Tether during an interview. A guy asked me as an entrepreneur my mission is bringing my startup from zero to one. he was citing Peter Thiel's book Tether is not a startup anymore. At which stage from zero to 100 is Tether? He replied, I feel like we're still at 0.25. Our potential growth from here is limitless. So much more to disrupt through innovation, so much more to build. Once people understand the real master plan behind every single calculated action we take daily, they realize the true unprecedented potential of this company. That's the way I often define Tether as a once in a century company. Tether is also going out and looking to raise from the rumor mill at $500 billion valuation looking to raise 20 billion. In addition to that, the CFTC has approved stable coins for settlement on traditional American derivatives markets. How important is Tether to Plasma's vision? Maybe a silly question. And then how important is this broad relationship that you have with Paulo pushing stable coins forward in the White House? How impactful is that for plasma?

Paul: I mean one thing to say straight off the bat if tether is at what point 0.25 then I think plasma is at 0.00001 and we have a lot of things ahead of us and sounds bullish. I mean look like the guys of Tether have obviously kind of built a truly generational company. And have done that over many many years with a lot of kind of extremely long-term oriented decision-making and so I think that is something that we we can only we can only hope to emulate as plasma. I think USDT has very much won the stable coin game is my view. I'm somewhat incentivized to have that view. So you can probably discount that a bit. But I truly think that is the reality of it. And so for us it was always very clear that plasma would also be built around USDT. I mean, we have a kind of multitude of stable coins on the chain and I do believe in a multi-stable coin world obviously, but Tether is just so incredibly dominant and has this extremely wide distribution moat that I think is very very hard to replicate and so we do appreciate them and really like working with them. I mean, I have the deepest of respect for Paulo and the entire Tether crew.

Andy: Yeah. As do we. Paul, my last question is, there's so much that happens on a daily basis and in crypto and across this entire industry. That someone might be coming across Plasma. It's a super successful launch. What's the one thing that you would want someone who's just coming across plasma to know and where can they go to learn more?

Paul: I mean, everyone can go to learn more at plasma.to. I think one thing that I would want everyone to know is we will win stable coins. And I think stable coins are going to be one of the largest kind of just markets globally, point blank. The TAM is global GDP. And we're looking to take a chunk of it. And I think that vision is very clear on our end. I think global commerce will move on stable coin rails and plasma is going to power it.

Andy: Boom. Powering internet money. Paul, thanks for joining the show. Good luck. Have a good weekend. All right. Have a beer for me in London if you get five minutes off. Take a breath, man.

Paul: I'm my plan is just to sleep to be honest. So, I don't think many beers will be consumed.

Andy: All right. Thanks for your time and congratulations on the launch and to all the partners to all the investors to all the people in the collective and in the community thank you for your work lot to be done. This is a new day one. This is just the beginning. I know that's how you're thinking about it. So stoked to see some of the updates from Plasma 1 and everything else in between. And we'll see you soon, man.

Paul: Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.