Plasma builds out senior team ahead of mainnet: Exclusive
One of the new hires was formerly FTX’s global head of payments
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Plasma, a forthcoming layer-1 blockchain built for stablecoins, has made three new senior hires, Blockworks has learned exclusively.
The startup brought in Murat Firat as head of product, Adam Jacobs as head of global payments, and Usmann Khan as head of protocol security. These senior level hires come shortly after the Peter Thiel-backed project held a blockbuster token sale that netted some $373 million in commitments.
Plasma is yet to publicly announce a date for its mainnet launch.
Plasma will be purpose-built for stablecoins, which according to its public documentation means over 1,000 transactions per second, zero-fee USDT transfers, custom gas tokens, and confidential transactions.
The fee-less Tether stablecoin transfers will be enabled by an in-protocol paymaster, according to Plasma’s documentation. Charging no gas fees would mean users wouldn’t need to hold native tokens in order to transact on Plasma.
The protocol seems to be on friendly terms with Tether. Zero-fee transfers are only enabled for USDT, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino is on the cap table, and Bitfinex, where Ardoino is also chief technology officer, led Plasma’s seed and series A rounds alongside USDT “liquidity protocol” USDT0 and Framework Ventures.
“[We will] work closely with Tether to ensure Plasma becomes a key distribution channel for the most liquid and dominant stablecoin,” Plasma CEO and founder Paul Faecks said.
Plasma’s new hires come from varying backgrounds. Firat had previously founded Turkish crypto exchange and Lira-pegged stablecoin issuer BiLira. Jacobs was once global head of payments at FTX before spending time at the Canadian fintech firm Nuvei. Khan is rated sixth on the leaderboard for crypto bug-bounty site ImmuneFi.
Plasma has made several other key hires since coming out of stealth in October 2024. Others include Jacob Wittman becoming general counsel and the anonymous river0x and murf becoming DeFi lead and senior product designer, respectively.
As the protocol approaches mainnet, the thesis that stablecoins need a blockchain of their own will be put to the test.
“We’ve made deliberate, protocol-level design changes to treat stablecoins as first-class citizens. This way, stablecoins rails on Plasma will be able to underpin global money movement in the digital era,” Faecks said.
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