The Plasma white paper written by Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin spurred a large wave of innovation, but it equally created confusion on many topics. One year later, Plasma slightly departed from its original vision, having now a rather expansive definition, with several different proposed implementations.
Let's briefly describe the recent history of Plasma, as it rolled out over the last year! Minimum Viable Plasma was introduced as a model adhering to most of the procedures outlined in the white paper, but it turned out that some parts, such as the multi-step process of state transitions, could be dramatically improved. Shortly after, Plasma Cash did just that by the means of non-fungible tokens, enabling simple, reliable and low-cost transactions. It is in particular applicable to high throughput but low or medium-state applications, like micropayments and exchanges. Other notable examples include Plasma Debit, Plasma Xt and More Viable Plasma.
Due to this amalgam of implementa