Plasma
Plasma is a new concept introduced by Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Poon in a research paper titled Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts, which was published in August 2017. It is similar, in a way, to state channels as it aims to build a platform for conducting transactions off the main blockchain, while it's still connected to it.
The novelty here is that Plasma allows for so-called child blockchains attached to the main Ethereum blockchain through a set of smart contracts. Each child chain, in turn, can have its own child sub-chains. This architecture enables many complex operations to be done by smart contracts only at the child chain level, with minimal interaction with the Ethereum mainnet. In this way, the scaling of entire ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access