Glossary
Plasma
An early Ethereum scaling design that moves transactions to child chains while keeping funds securable on L1 through periodic commitments and user-submitted exit proofs.
Plasma is a framework for building "child" chains that process transactions off the main chain and periodically commit a compact state root back to Ethereum. It predates rollups and was one of the first serious attempts to scale Ethereum without trusting a separate validator set.
Its defining feature is the exit game: because transaction data lives off-chain, users must be able to withdraw their funds back to L1 by submitting a proof, and challenge fraudulent exits during a dispute window. That reliance on data availability and watchful users proved awkward in practice, which is why most teams moved to rollups — but Plasma's exit-proof ideas still shape modern Layer-2 thinking.