Over $40 million in financing, a quick look at the new "Big Hair" Movement backed by Binance and OKX capital

Author: Mia, ChainCatcher

Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher

Recently, the blockchain development team Movement Labs completed a $38 million Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital, with support from investment institutions such as Hack VC, Foresight Ventures, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, and OKX Ventures, ranking among the top five in blockchain funding in April.

This month, Binance Labs also extended an olive branch, announcing an investment in Movement Labs.

According to data from the crypto asset data platform Rootdata, Movement has been among the top trending projects for a week.

Data from platform X shows that Movement has reached 137,000 fans, while the Discord community has over 76,000 members.

With the backing of capital, expectations for Movement to become the next "must-have" project are continuously fermenting, and the interaction with its testnet has become one of the most discussed topics in recent crypto discussions.

Movement Project Overview

Information released by Movement Labs indicates that it was established in 2023, led by Aptos software engineer Rushi Manche and blockchain entrepreneur Cooper Scanlon, with a team composed of former senior members from Biconomy, Sui/Mysten Labs, Fluid Finance, and other teams.

At the project's launch in 2023, Movement Labs completed a $3.4 million Pre-Seed funding round led by Varys Capital and dao5, and launched the Movement SDK to provide a secure and high-performance Move environment for the blockchain ecosystem. With the recent $38 million funding, Movement Labs' total funding has reached $41.4 million.

Movement Labs stated that it is building a blockchain network based on the Move language, with Movement being its first integrated blockchain network designed specifically for speed and security, used to build and deploy Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment.

Applications and protocols launched on Movement can benefit from high throughput and complete smart contract security while maintaining optimal liquidity and security on Ethereum.

Movement Labs claims that it is committed to building a suite of products and services based on Move, with Movement being the blockchain ecosystem created by Movement Labs, centered around M1 and M2. M1 pursues ultra-fast, secure, and deterministic transactions, while M2 serves as a bridge between Ethereum and the Move world.

Additionally, Movement Labs has provided many other "tools" and "facilities" for the ecosystem, such as Movement SDK and Movement CLI, to help developers create their blockchain projects more easily.

Why Did Movement Choose Move?

Move is a programming language designed by Facebook for smart contracts, emphasizing the security and ownership of digital assets. In Move, all assets are treated as "resources" and are scarce by default, making them difficult to copy or delete accidentally. Only explicitly allowed structures can be copied, and specific operations can delete them.

To control access to these resources, Move introduces the concepts of accounts and modules.

Modules can be libraries containing functions or programs that handle assets, and only the public functions of a module can be used by other modules. The creation and modification of structures (i.e., containers for resources) are typically restricted to the module in which they are defined, but can also be operated externally through public functions.

In Move, the initiator of a transaction is called a signer and must be the verified owner of a specific account. The signer has the highest authority in the system, able to add resources to the account, and developers can set conditions requiring the signer to exist to access or modify the assets in the account.

From Movement's perspective, Move's serial numbers and static invocation of functions excel in transaction security, uniqueness, and execution efficiency.

Data source: https://docs.movementlabs.xyz/

M1 and Its Features

M1 is the first blockchain product in the Movement ecosystem, powered by Movement SDK. It is currently in the testnet phase, primarily for testing and development purposes. As a permissionless blockchain based on Move, M1 runs on the Avalanche subnet and aims to provide users with a highly secure, flexible, and scalable blockchain solution.

Compatibility

Compatible with Aptos, supporting the Move language, developers can leverage the rich tools and resources in the Aptos ecosystem to easily build and deploy applications based on M1; it is also compatible with Solidity, allowing Ethereum developers to seamlessly migrate to the M1 blockchain. They can utilize the Solidity language and tools they are already familiar with to quickly build and deploy applications based on M1.

Scalability

Using a Fractal architecture, supporting both vertical and horizontal scaling, M1 can flexibly expand and customize according to business needs, meeting the growing demands of users and transaction volumes.

Efficient Consensus

Employing Avalanche's Snowman consensus mechanism, M1 ensures high availability and data consistency of the blockchain network while reducing the risk of malicious attacks in the network.

Asset Liquidity

M1 acts as a bridge connecting the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and the Move ecosystem, achieving asset interoperability with Ethereum and other Move blockchains, promoting the liquidity and efficiency of digital assets.

Modularity and Interoperability

Supports the construction of modular and interoperable application chains.

M2 and Its Features

M2 is a zk-rollup solution based on Ethereum L1 infrastructure, aiming to enhance the scalability and efficiency of the blockchain ecosystem through its Movement SDK's MoveVM and Fractal technology. While inheriting Ethereum's extensive community and mature ecosystem, it introduces a zk-rollup architecture that achieves breakthroughs of tens of thousands of TPS (transactions per second).

M2 achieves close interaction with Ethereum through native L1 clients and M2 bridging smart contracts, making asset transfers more convenient and reliable. By introducing Rollup technology, most transactions are executed off the main chain, improving transaction processing efficiency and scalability.

M2 is built on M1, with M1 serving as the PoS (Proof of Stake) sequencer network for M2, responsible for verifying, ordering, and constructing transactions in the M2 ledger. M1's Snowman consensus mechanism ensures the correctness and efficiency of M2 transactions, while its high throughput and low latency characteristics are also suitable for handling high transaction volume scenarios. To participate in the sequencer processing in the M1 network and earn fees, validators need to stake MOVE tokens.

M2 provides M1 with a user interaction interface and rich API interfaces, enabling end users to easily conduct transactions and queries.

At the same time, M2 encourages full nodes to participate in the maintenance and security of the network, contributing to network security by verifying transactions and submitting zk-proofs.

It is reported that M2 aims to become the first Move Layer-2 on Ethereum, supporting Sui Move, Aptos Move, and the embedded EVM interpreter MEVM. In the future, Sui, Aptos, and EVM users will be able to utilize M2 for efficient transaction processing. Currently, M2 is in the testnet phase for testing and development, operating as a Celestia rollup.

Move Token

Currently, MOVE is designated as a testnet token, used as a native token in the Movement ecosystem, but only within the M1 testnet environment.

Interaction Tutorial

First, you need to add Aptos, Sui, and EVM-compatible wallets. For detailed wallet setup tutorials, please see https://docs.movementlabs.xyz/ecosystem/wallets, and visit the website to claim test tokens https://faucet.movementlabs.xyz/?network=devnet.

Additionally, Movement is conducting testing tasks on Galxe.com (https://app.galxe.com/quest/Movement/GCXUotzKdd).

Currently, Movement is still in its early stages, but the strength of its behind-the-scenes investment team gives Movement infinite possibilities to become a popular project in the future.