Plasma is a proposed framework that would serve as a scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. It proposes utilizing Merkle trees and smart contracts to create a series of side chains which will host the majority of the network’s volume and only rarely interact with the main chain. Thus Plasma hopes to greatly decrease transaction volume and increase efficiency on the primary Ethereum blockchain.

Another benefit of Plasma is that since each smaller side chain (or child chain) run on different types of customized smart contracts, crypto projects are able to choose the side chain (or chains) that best suit their individual use cases.

Who created Plasma?

Plasma was originally suggested by Vitalik Buterin (one of the main co-founders of Ethereum) as well as Joseph Poon (an Ethereum developer) in 2017 as a potential answer to help Ethereum’s scaling problem.

Does Plasma exist on Bitcoin?

Plasma has not been used or implemented to help scale Bitcoin. However, it does contain certain similarities with both the Lightning Network (a second layer scaling solution for Bitcoin) and Liquid (a side chain scaling solution for Bitcoin).