Today, I am looking at $XPL actually focusing on one "very unsexy but most real" thing: how supply shocks are absorbed when used on-chain. Because on January 25, there is an unlocking of 88.89M XPL (approximately accounting for over 4% of the released supply, UTC 12:00) — such days are most likely to turn the "narrative" back into "accounting".

I flipped through the on-chain dashboard: Plasma's current Bridged TVL is about 7.06B, with Native at 4.71B, and the stablecoin market cap is around 1.919B; however, at the same time, the chain fee for 24 hours is only $85, DEX volume for 24 hours is about 4.02M, and the 7-day volume is 93.65M with a week-on-week decrease of -70%. This set of numbers is a bit "awkward but honest": money is on-chain, but the density of users who are truly willing to pay frequently and exchange frequently has not yet pushed the usage curve up.
In terms of price, XPL is currently around $0.13, circulating 1.8B, and the market cap is over 200 million USD; so whether the market will feel pain from this unlock depends on whether the "new available chips" can be caught by real demand, rather than relying on hype.