What Is Plasma?
Also known as: Plasma Chains, Plasma Framework
In short
Plasma is a Layer 2 scaling framework proposed for Ethereum that processes transactions on 'child chains' attached to the main chain and writes only summary data to the main chain, allowing funds to be withdrawn with fraud proofs if problems arise.
Plasma was proposed in a 2017 paper published by Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin. In the model, an operator produces the blocks on the child chain and sends the Merkle root of these blocks at regular intervals to a smart contract on Ethereum. Users move to the child chain by depositing their assets into this contract; transactions take place not on the main chain but on the child chain, which is much cheaper and faster.
Security rests on the exit mechanism. If the operator publishes a fraudulent block, users can withdraw their funds back to the main chain by submitting a fraud proof within a set challenge period. Polygon (formerly Matic Network) also used a Plasma-based bridge in its initial design.
Plasma's main weakness is the data availability problem: if the operator withholds block data, users cannot produce proofs, and a 'mass exit' situation in which everyone tries to exit at once can clog the main chain. Supporting general-purpose smart contracts is also difficult. For these reasons, interest in the Ethereum ecosystem has largely shifted to rollups, which publish transaction data on the main chain.
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