Exclusive Interview with Movement Labs Co-founder: A New Attempt to Build Ethereum L2 with Move

Interviewees: Rushi Manche, Cooper Scanlon, Co-founders of Movement Labs

Interview and Compilation: Wendy, Luffy, Foresight News

In the past two years, the competition between new L1 public chains and Ethereum L2 has undoubtedly been the core arena of the entire crypto world. The L2 track has birthed star representatives like Optimism and Arbitrum; while the most prominent among L1 public chains are Aptos and Sui, both of which utilize the Move language, distinct from Solidity.

The Move language originated from Meta's (formerly Facebook) blockchain project Libra. After Libra was terminated due to regulatory reasons, Move experienced a rebirth. This new development language is making significant strides in the crypto world, with a thriving ecosystem and a host of promising projects emerging. Movement Labs, which is dedicated to promoting Move and aims to make "Move ubiquitous," is one of them.

In April of this year, Movement raised $38 million in Series A funding led by Polychain Capital, ambitiously aiming to bring the Move language into the world of Ethereum EVM. It's an imaginative new story, but what you may not know is that the two protagonists behind this story, Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon (the two co-founders of Movement), are just in their early twenties. Foresight News recently spoke with these two young founders, who shared their entrepreneurial journey, fundraising, project vision, and current plans.

1. As alumni of Vanderbilt University, you are three years apart in age (Rushi Manche, 21; Cooper Scanlon, 24), yet you co-founded Movement Labs together. How did you meet? When did you decide to start Movement Labs together?

Rushi: As you mentioned, we met during college. When I encountered Cooper, I was a freelancer using Solidity as my programming language. We wanted to build applications with something safer than Solidity, and then the Move language caught our attention. We knew we needed to build on Ethereum because it is where users and real liquidity congregate in the crypto world, and thus Movement Labs was born.

2. Can you briefly describe the vision of Movement Labs? What are your current work focuses? What is your team structure like? Please give a brief overview of Movement Labs' current product line.

Cooper: The vision of Movement Labs is to create a safer and more unified Web3 ecosystem, breaking down liquidity silos and achieving seamless interoperability between different blockchains. Our goal is to provide developers with easy access to high-performance networks, allowing the entire blockchain space to operate as a cohesive, internet-like service.

Our current focus is on developing our flagship products, the M1 and M2 networks, along with a robust suite of tools to support them. We are about to launch the M2 mainnet, which will be the first Layer 2 solution based on the Move language on Ethereum. It will support multiple Move implementations, including Sui Move and Aptos Move, as well as our embedded EVM interpreter, MEVM. This will enable developers from various ecosystems (including Sui, Aptos, and EVM-based platforms) to leverage the advantages of our L2 solution.

One of the key features of M2 is its EVM parallelization capability. By utilizing the Move language and Sui's parallelization model, we can achieve high throughput and low latency for EVM transactions. This is accomplished through object-centric storage and the ability to execute transactions in parallel.

Our EVM parallelization approach involves converting EVM bytecode into Move bytecode and then executing it in parallel. This conversion process preserves the semantics of the original EVM code while enabling it to take advantage of the parallelization benefits offered by the Move language and Sui execution model.

To facilitate the development and adoption of our network, we are also developing the Movement SDK, Movement CLI, Fractal, and Hyperlane messaging infrastructure. These tools will provide developers with the necessary resources to easily build and deploy applications on our platform.

We have a team of engineers, researchers, and business developers working together to turn our vision into reality.

3. Movement is an Ethereum Layer 2 based on the Move language. Some may think this story is not "sexy" enough or call it "micro-innovation." Moreover, both of you are quite young, at 21 and 24 years old, respectively. Some people, including potential investors, might ask, "Why you?" How would you respond to such skepticism?

Rushi: The Move language emphasizes ownership and security, which are the cornerstones of safety. Assets in Move are represented as resources, and due to Move's powerful ownership model and explicit resource handling capabilities, it simplifies the development of secure smart contracts. This includes everyday blockchain functionalities such as asset ownership transfer, minting, and burning, all of which form the foundation of DApp activities.

As for why people should trust Movement Labs, it all traces back to our years of experience building Web3 applications and developing blockchain execution environments. For example, I have been a smart contract engineer in the Ethereum DeFi space for years and have closely collaborated with multiple Cosmos ecosystem protocols. Additionally, Cooper's financial and technical expertise, along with insights into economic systems, helps guide Movement Labs in the right strategic and cultural direction.

4. In your recent funding round, how did you convince Polychain to lead the investment? What was the decisive moment? Any interesting stories to share?

Rushi: Polychain (like other investors) recognized the immense potential of the products being built by Movement Labs. They share our vision of creating a more secure and interoperable blockchain ecosystem powered by Move.

They understood our technical strength and team capabilities. We demonstrated how the M1 and M2 networks are built on Move and deeply integrated with Ethereum, achieving new levels of security, scalability, and cross-chain liquidity. We are thrilled that Polychain chose to support us.

5. You have repeatedly emphasized the security of the Move language. In what aspects is this security primarily reflected? What is the biggest advantage of Move compared to Solidity? For example, how does it address the issue of reentrancy attacks?

Rushi: While Move and Solidity serve somewhat different purposes, they can coexist and even complement each other. Move's focus is on security and performance. This makes it more suitable for building complex smart contracts designed for high-performance applications. Meanwhile, Solidity already has a vast ecosystem and developer community behind it, and it will continue to exist. Regarding the issue of reentrancy attacks, Move eliminates typical paths for reentrancy by ensuring that resource access is unique.

6. What challenges have you encountered in integrating Move with Ethereum? Are there any potential challenges ahead?

Cooper: Seamlessly integrating Move and Ethereum into a single network is complex. From a technical perspective, ensuring secure cross-chain messaging, data availability, and unified liquidity requires meticulous engineering design. We must pioneer new approaches to tackle these challenges.

In the future, our focus will be on creating an intuitive developer experience to drive the adoption of our Move-supported tools and networks. Fortunately, we have an excellent team that has proven capable of navigating complexity and delivering outstanding products. Our experience building for Move and the EVM ecosystem gives us an advantage in coordinating both. Meanwhile, our investors provide resources and strategic advice to help us scale.

7. How do you plan to increase the adoption of the Move language (which may exceed the capabilities of a single project)? What specific strategies do you have? What is the biggest challenge in this regard?

Cooper: The resource-oriented programming model of Move and its built-in security features make it more attractive for building truly high-performance blockchain applications. Our goal is to achieve "Move everywhere" through widespread adoption and by introducing interoperable developer tools across other networks and environments. By providing open-source frameworks and protocols, we believe we can accelerate the adoption of Move and unleash its full potential for developers.

8. At the Layer 2 level, which projects will Movement focus on supporting? The Move community is quite active in China; what are your views on the Asian market? Besides Asia, where are Move developers primarily concentrated? How do you incentivize more developers to learn Move?

Cooper: We already have a growing ecosystem of Movement-based projects, including oracles, automated market makers, wallets, and more. We can provide all the services needed for a functioning Web3 world.

Additionally, as part of our global strategy, we place great importance on the Asia-Pacific region. This is because we know that the Move developer community there has a wealth of talent and tremendous potential, and it is home to many of the earliest builders and believers in Move. We support all Asian Move developers and are excited to provide them with the resources, education, and opportunities they need to excel in our ecosystem.

That said, we believe the best way to incentivize developers in any region is to build a developer-centric platform that naturally attracts talent to utilize the features offered by Move. We are working to promote awareness through social and community channels like X and Discord, letting developers across all networks know that there is now a set of tools specifically designed for them.

9. Like Movement, Aptos and Sui are also based on the Move language, but they chose Layer 1 projects while you opted for Ethereum Layer 2. How do you view the development prospects of these different paths?

Cooper: Ethereum is currently the cultural center of Web3, where the vast majority of blockchain developers share ideas, tools, liquidity, and network effects. By building a Move-driven Layer 2 framework on Ethereum, we can leverage the rich resources of the Ethereum ecosystem while enhancing it with the advanced security, scalability, and performance of the Move language.

This allows us to offer developers the best of both worlds: the security and rich features of Move, along with seamless access to Ethereum's vibrant DApp ecosystem and early good liquidity. We believe this is the key to promoting the adoption of Move and the success of the next generation of DApps.

10. Similar to Aptos and Sui, the birth of Movement Labs also stems from Facebook's blockchain vision. However, Facebook faced immense regulatory pressure at the time, leading to its eventual abandonment of the project. Now, regulatory challenges still exist. We see that from Coinbase to Uniswap, and now Consensys, they are all embroiled in lawsuits/disputes with various regulatory bodies. As entrepreneurs in the blockchain space, how do you view the current regulatory landscape? How will this affect your decision-making on significant issues?

Rushi: We have been keeping an eye on regulatory developments across multiple jurisdictions, and we aim to proceed cautiously while adhering to legal frameworks. That said, this field is still evolving and changing. We hope to respond to any developments and changes in the regulatory space as best as we can while maintaining compliance, and we will address new issues as they arise.