Plasma

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Plasma is a Layer 2 scaling solution primarily associated with the Ethereum blockchain, designed to significantly increase transaction throughput and reduce transaction costs. It functions by creating “child chains” or “sidechains” that are anchored to the main blockchain (the “root chain,” e.g., Ethereum). These child chains can process a large number of transactions independently, offloading much of the computational burden from the main chain.

Each Plasma chain has its own consensus mechanism and can be optimized for specific use cases. The security of these child chains is still fundamentally tied to the root chain through a system of fraud proofs and exit mechanisms. Periodically, a summary or “commitment” of the transactions processed on the Plasma chain is submitted to the root chain, ensuring that the overall state remains verifiable and secure. If any malicious activity is detected on a child chain, users can typically use the fraud proofs to safely withdraw their assets back to the main chain. Plasma aims to enable blockchains to handle a much larger volume of transactions, making them more suitable for mainstream applications without compromising the core security and decentralization of the underlying mainnet.

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