As 'Plasma' Stalls, SNARKs Become New Hope for Scaling Ethereum Now

The event featured seven tracks dedicated to the tech and related systems, and Kelvin Fichter, plasma researcher at decentralized exchange OmiseGo, referred to the growing hype as a "Snark-nado."

Plasma was first conceived by Buterin and Joseph Poon, co-author of bitcoin's Lightning Network white paper, in April 2017, the idea being that scaling can be achieved by pushing the actual computation of smart contracts off of the main ethereum blockchain.

Still, each new plasma iteration reveals a new research problem that needs to be addressed, leading to multiple plasma variants that navigate deployment trade-offs in different ways.

An implementation dubbed minimal viable plasma "Has time constraints, is horrible for UI, and is vulnerable to network congestion," David Knott, plasma researcher for OmiseGo, told the audience at Devcon4.

While one iteration of plasma - the so-called plasma cash - is usable today, it's difficult for users and developers to interact with.

There's a push toward what Fichter called the "Holy grail" of plasma research: a generalized plasma that seeks to combine elements - as well as the lessons learned - from all techniques.

That's because, in order to function, plasma relies on what is known as an "Exit," which is how users extract funds from plasma and place them back on the blockchain itself.

While plasma "Can become super complex," George told CoinDesk, "With snapps we have a super simple architecture."

Still, there's evidence that the two research streams - focusing separately on plasma and snarks - can actually loop back into each other as well.

Fichter introduced a new term - "Plapps" - meaning that decentralized applications that run on plasma.