Ethereum update: Plasma vs. Plasma Cash vs. Plasma Debit
This seems to be a point of confusion between members of the community, I’d like to provide a simple overview of each. First off, Plasma is **not a sidechain** – sidechains are independent blockchains that will not fail if our main chain fails.
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**Meet the Plasmas!**
**Plasma** (what omiseGo is working on) is general purpose – it’s like another Ethereum, it can handle the same state changes and is based in the main Ethereum chain (increasing # of transactions that the network can handle).
**Plasma Cash** is like the bitcoin lightning network, but it limited to payments with non-fungible tokens (like exchanging physical coins).
**Plasma Debit** is the same as Plasma Cash, but allows for arbitrarily-sized payments between different Ethereum addresses (like a debit card).
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At present, they all run on a PoA network with a single node called an ‘operator’ – this is a highly centralized model and teams are looking to transition this to PoS.
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If you’d like to learn more details on Plasma Cash / Debit, I just wrote [this article](https://medium.com/@eolszewski/plasma-debit-simplified-dd8aa233e602) covering Plasma Debit (which thusly covers all Plasma Cash functionality, as well).
About Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.
Author: eolszewski
Score: 105
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