Movement Labs: Democratizing the Move Programming Language for Web3 Builders

Movement Labs is on a mission to democratize and decentralize the growth of the Move programming language. Move's universal availability for and widespread application to blockchains and decentralized applications (DApps) could enhance performance, security and user experience in web3. On top of that, its familiar syntax also helps onboard more Web 2.0 developers to the cryptocurrency industry.

This article delves into Movement Labs’s background, its founders and its ecosystem's core components and players. You’ll also learn about the key features of the M2 MoveVM ZK-based Layer 2 (L2) chain and the tokenomics behind the native MOVE token.

Key Takeaways:

• As an open network of modular blockchains, Movement Labs aims to democratize and decentralize the Move programming language's growth.

• Originally developed by Meta as part of the now-abandoned Diem project, Move offers increased security, user experience, flexibility and performance for DApps.

• To date, Movement Labs has secured $41.4 million in funding from investors, with over 200 project teams committing to more than $150 million in total value locked (TVL).

What Is Movement Labs?

Movement Labs is an open network of modular blockchains powered by the Move programming language. Its ultimate goal is to create a global community of Move builders who work together to enhance the security, performance and user experience of building in decentralized networks. The project's Movement SDK modular framework, Movement Network (also known as M1), powers a Layer 1 (L1) network of Move-based blockchains. Another flagship product from Movement Labs is M2, an Ethereum-based Layer 2 rollup.

At the center of Movement Labs is the Move programming language, which was originally developed by Meta for the now-abandoned Diem-permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin. However, the programming language survived the project's downfall, and was implemented into the Aptos and Sui chains by former Diem developers. In comparison to Solidity and other popular languages used to deploy and run DApps and smart contracts, Move offers increased scalability, security and user experience.

Who Founded Movement Labs?

Movement Labs was founded in 2023 by Cooper Scanlon and Rushi Manche. Dropping out of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., along with his fellow co-founder, Scanlon's journey led to the blockchain industry. In addition, he pioneered the first Move-based yield aggregator before co-founding Movement Labs.

Manche started his career as an engineer with a focus on databases and systems security. After entering the web3 space, he developed smart contracts and worked on a Cosmos-based decentralized file storage system. He also became a core contributor to the Aptos ecosystem, engineering the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) in the L1 blockchain's DeFi sector. However, after realizing Aptos's limitations, he decided to co-create Movement Labs with Scanlon in order to democratize Move and bring it to Ethereum.

How Does Movement Labs Work?

Movement Labs seeks to provide radical improvement to building web3 DApps by improving Move’s accessibility through a modular framework for blockchains. This addresses a key challenge related to Solidity, the primary language used to deploy and launch smart contracts on Ethereum.

In addition to its complexity, Solidity lacks a formal verification process and isn't memory- or type-safe. This has led to numerous smart contract vulnerabilities, due to bugs, errors and typos, which have been exploited by hackers, causing billions of dollars in losses for web3 DApps.

In contrast, Move is a programming language that reduces the chance of type confusion. It also has built-in support for formal verification, helping developers ensure that code is correct and error-free before deployment. Besides enhancing security, Move's resource-oriented design, parallel transaction support and compact bytecode make web3 DApps more efficient and scalable. Moreover, its Rust-like syntax makes it familiar to widely-used programming languages, fostering seamless onboarding for Web 2.0 developers.

Leveraging Move, Movement Labs' ecosystem includes the following core products and components.

• Move Network: A community-first L1 blockchain that leverages Move to provide high scalability, instant finality, modular customizations and native day-zero access to mass liquidity.

• MoveVM: A state-of-the-art blockchain virtual machine (a type of software “virtual computer” used by developers to help them create DApps) based on the Move programming language, optimized for secure and efficient smart contract execution.

• Movement SDK: This Movement software development kit (SDK) is a modular framework for building DApps. It facilitates interoperability and harmonizes the strengths of MoveVM and Solidity to set a new standard in blockchain integration. In addition to serving as a bridge between the Ethereum and Move ecosystems, it fulfills an integral role in M2, improving Ethereum's capabilities with Move's advanced security and resource management.

• M1: A decentralized network of shared sequencers integrated with the Ethereum-based M2 Layer 2 rollup, and powered by the Movement SDK. By ensuring a unified settlement layer for integrations, developers can create their own DApps chains with M1, creating an execution environment to support Move on any blockchain.

• M2: M2 is Movement Labs' ZK-rollup-based L2 chain for Ethereum. As the first MoveVM-based L2 for Ethereum, it uses Celestia as a modular data availability layer for achieving enhanced scalability, and the Snowman consensus mechanism for shared sequencing.

• Fractal: An Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) interpreter that allows developers to transform legacy Solidity code into MoveVM environment. Fractal allows developers to run their code through MoveVM and access liquidity on the EVM with backward compatibility for their existing DApp codebases. This means they can leverage Move's benefits while making their applications available on Ethereum.

Key Features of the M2 MoveVM ZK Layer 2

Movement Labs' M2 MoveVM Layer 2 ZK-rollup brings the Move programming language to the Ethereum blockchain. Its key features are as follows.

• High Throughput: With transaction parallelization and Move's efficiency, M2 is not only the first MoveVM ZK L2 on Ethereum but also the fastest. It has a theoretical maximum rate of over 160,000 transactions per second (TPS), and its gas fees are less than $0.01 on average.

• Fast Finality: The M1 decentralized sequencer enables the Layer 2 chain to achieve sub-second transaction finality.

• Enhanced Security: M2 taps into the Move language's formal verification and type-free features to strengthen the security of Ethereum DApps.

• Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Proofs: The L2 chain leverages zero-knowledge proofs to offer enhanced scalability and privacy.

Movement Ecosystem: Key Players

The key players of the Movement ecosystem include the following.

• Investors: To date, Movement Labs has raised $41.4 million from venture capitalists in two rounds. Notable investors include Varys Capital, dao5, Blizzard Fund by Avalanche, Polychain Capital, Hack VC and Robot Ventures.

• Developers and Projects: These include Satay Finance, Frax Finance and Echelon, and over 200 teams with more than $150 million in total value locked (TVL) commits.

• Partnerships: Movement Labs has partnered with multiple prominent web3 projects, including NEAR, Binance Labs, Frax, VCRED, BRKT, Superchain, Thala Labs and others.

MOVE Tokenomics and Market Performance

Launched on December 9, 2024, MOVE is the native token that powers Movement Network. With the goal of achieving the ecosystem's long-term objectives, the digital asset fulfills the following utilities.

• Staking: Validators receive staking rewards in MOVE for providing economic security to the network.

• Gas Fees: Gas fees are denominated and paid in MOVE on the M2 Layer 2 blockchain.

• Governance: In the future, holders will be able to use MOVE to propose and vote on governance proposals.

• Native Assets: DApps built on the Movement Network can leverage MOVE for collateral, asset liquidity and payment.

MOVE has a maximum supply cap of 10 billion tokens, with 2.25 billion currently in circulation. The majority of the remaining tokens are scheduled to unlock gradually over time, as illustrated in the image above. At the time of this writing (Dec 11, 2024), the MOVE cryptocurrency's market cap stands at around $1.5 billion, with nearly $1.75 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, the distribution of MOVE tokens is as follows:

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Movement Labs aims to enhance security, scalability and user experience in web3 by making the Move programming language more accessible. With the L1 Movement Network, Layer 2 M2 rollup, Movement SDK and MOVE token, its network can achieve extremely high TPS with sub-second transaction finality and EVM interoperability. Backed by over $40 million in funding and $150 million in TVL commits from more than 200 developers, Movement Labs is on track to make its vision a reality.

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