The Next Stop of the Payment Chain: Integrating Verifiable #AI , Transitioning from Transaction Value to Computational Value
In the past two years, most metrics of the "payment chain" have been very clear: TPS, Gas costs, daily settlement volume of stablecoins. Chains centered around stablecoins can easily achieve an average daily transaction count of 100,000 to 500,000, with a single transaction cost reduced to the level of $0.001, which is already efficient enough. But the problem is also very obvious—there's a low ceiling on value. You're just transporting "existing money" faster and cheaper.
The interesting aspect of #Plasma is that it is not satisfied with only serving "transaction value" but is inherently directed towards computational value.
Under the client verification model of Plasma, the chain does not recompute all processes but anchors results and state commitments. What does this mean?
It means that an AI inference, risk control decision, credit scoring, or content review does not need to run the model repeatedly on the chain; it only needs to be responsible for the results.
If no one questions it, the cost approaches 0;
Once challenged, it enters the verification or penalty process.
From the data perspective, the comparison is very intuitive:
• For a medium-scale AI inference, the on-chain full verification cost could range from several dozen to several hundred dollars.
• Plasma-style result verification keeps only the hash and state, and the on-chain cost can be compressed to the level of a few cents.
• And in real-world systems, the challenge occurrence rate is often below 1%.
This directly changes the unit economic model of the "payment chain." When a chain can not only settle USDT but also settle **“a previously trusted computational result”**, its service targets are no longer just users and merchants, but also AI applications, data providers, and automated systems.
Thus, Plasma represents not a "faster payment chain" but a shift:
From transporting value to carrying the value generation process itself.
The next stage of #支付链 is not just about settling money,
But about—whether this computation is worth being trusted.
