Which side should you stand on in the public argument between the two major "VC coins"?
The "Halal Era," where one could raise valuations and secure funding merely by aligning with a certain ideology, has come to an end.Author: shushu, BlockBeats
The Ethereum ecosystem has just experienced a reversal in the past two days, but the Ethereum community is not calm. A former team member of the zkRollup project Scroll has gotten into a dispute with Movement, which just concluded its testnet and announced an airdrop. Scroll accused Movement of code plagiarism, while Movement claimed that Scroll's team acted inappropriately, single-handedly damaging the reputation of the Layer 2 ecosystem. Currently, the official members of the Scroll team have not made a formal response.
Why the Direct Confrontation?
The spark for the debate ignited in someone else's comment section. @enshriningplebs posted, "We invented the concept of 'postconfirmations' to issue our tokens before going live on the mainnet." @seunlanlege sarcastically replied, "Oh, so only researchers from the Ethereum Foundation can invent objectively meaningless garbage protocols and that’s considered cool? What a double standard."
Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs, then added, "Exactly, only Uniswap and Flashbots are allowed to do this because they align with Ethereum's interests (by the way, I really like their architecture). As for the thousands of popular terms we created for those useless EVM L2s, that’s much more ethical."
Then, Toghrul, a former team member of Scroll, directly countered Rushi's sarcastic remarks by saying, "Stop pretending to be so high and mighty, okay?"
"Let's talk about those popular terms created by EVM L2s?" He believes that the new term "postconfirmations" is essentially just a rebranding of "preconfirmations," and this renaming was a result of them being mocked for calling themselves "fast finality Rollup." Even more absurdly, they themselves don't even understand whether it's an optimistic Rollup or a sidechain, as these two architectures are inherently contradictory.
Toghrul mentioned that he directly pointed out these issues in group discussions, but the response was, "No one uses them, so they can't be considered original," leaving him puzzled. He also stated that Movement's entire codebase is almost a fork from Aptos, with only minimal changes made. In contrast, those so-called "useless EVM L2s" have produced many widely used core technologies, such as Polygon inventing Plonky2 and Arbitrum creating a general fraud proof based on Wasm, while Movement can't even understand basic EVM support.
Rushi did not hold back, directly stating, "High and mighty? Are you kidding me?" He then began to list Scroll's offenses one by one.
Exploited the community for years, yet launched a predatory incentive plan that ultimately shifted the burden onto ordinary investors.
The team has been selling secondary market shares for years before the launch.
Other team members were forced to buy in at an $1.8 billion valuation while the top executives were selling at the same time.
You even directly allocated airdrop distributions to your own wallets for cashing out.
Designed the most predatory token economic model, aimed at harming every community member.
To express Rushi's anger directly, here is his original content for readers to feel:
"Today, because of your actions, almost no one wants to identify as EVM L2 anymore. You delivered the worst product, and the entire community and ecosystem are filled with resentment towards you. Now it’s clear you’re just bored. I won’t comment on technical matters; that should be addressed by researchers. You have been 'hounding' me for several months, while I have remained quiet and respectful. Technical debates are one thing; I believe we can improve, but you have crossed the line. If you want to debate with Franck on Spaces, go ahead. Otherwise, please improve your own chain and stop making it look like a complete scam."
He also added, "I have respect for some members of your team, but Scroll and you can be said to be among the worst participants in this field (at least 6 of your colleagues—half of whom have already left—specifically came to apologize to me for your actions)."
"In the past two months, a quarter of your team has applied for our positions. There are many people I really like on your side, so I feel a bit guilty, but please don’t come at me with that high and mighty attitude, haha."
Finally, Rushi said, "I am actively searching for 'Scroll scam' and learning more. @toghrulmaharram, don’t think about coming to trouble me, haha."
The Controversy of Scroll
Earlier this year, Starknet sparked outrage over the term "electronic beggar," and coincidentally, Scroll made the same mistake when its senior researcher Toghrul Maharramov directly referred to a user as an "electronic beggar" during a confrontation, even using malicious terms like fxxk in a post mocking users for seeking airdrops.
On September 15, the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial announced that Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng would become an advisor to the project, which the community viewed as an example of Scroll's adeptness at maintaining insider relationships.
In October, Scroll became the first pre-market trading project on Binance and announced its tokenomics. However, this news sparked community skepticism, accusing Scroll of having too low airdrop quotas while Binance Launchpool's quota ratio was too high, clearly trying to curry favor with Binance.
From the data, the total supply of SCR is 1 billion tokens, with an initial circulating supply of only 190 million tokens, accounting for 19% of the total. In the token distribution, airdrops account for only 15%, while ecosystem and growth account for 35%, and the Scroll DAO treasury accounts for 10%.
Even for the 15% airdrop, only 2% was circulating at TGE, with the remaining portion needing to be gradually unlocked over four years. In contrast, Binance Launchpool allocated 5.5%, with a TGE circulation ratio of 2.5%, and the remaining 17% also unlocking over four years, making the initial circulation ratio of Launchpool far higher than that of the community airdrop.
Additionally, the Scroll Foundation accounts for 10%, core contributors for 23%, and investors for 17%. The tokens of core contributors and investors only begin to unlock a year after TGE, but the proportions held by the ecosystem, Launchpool, and the Scroll Foundation in the initial circulation are relatively large. This distribution mechanism amplifies the holding weight of Binance and large institutions, while the community's interests are significantly compressed, deepening the community's doubts about Scroll's tokenomics design.
The community used K-lines to show Scroll what it means to be unique, and even Scroll's project logo was ridiculed by the community.
On one hand, Scroll is very adept at upward management, while on the other hand, community management appears to be overwhelmed. After the dispute between former team members and Rushi broke out, Movement clearly held the upper hand in public opinion.
Community Perspective
Leo Wong, founder of Movement's DEX WarpGate, stated that Toghrul's attacks not only lack technical basis but are also filled with malice. He accused Scroll of predatory behavior that is self-evident: internal sell-offs, exploitative token economic models, and community farming based on false promises. These actions not only tarnish Scroll's reputation but also undermine the concept of a fair blockchain ecosystem.
"If Scroll truly has technical criticisms, please have your researchers and engineers present them respectfully. Resorting to personal attacks and public smear campaigns only highlights your lack of confidence in your own platform and practices. The blockchain industry relies on collaboration, transparency, and trust, not petty acts of revenge."
Developer Andrew Capasso stated that Toghrul's redefinition of Scroll's criticisms as personal attacks is actually an evasion of responsibility for the team's collective behavior. He believes Toghrul is still entangled in the minutiae of words and has not realized that the real issue is Scroll's deliberate moral damage to the community.
"This undermines your credibility, whether you like it or not. A sense of responsibility and integrity is more important than technical details. You are not an obscure developer but one of their most powerful PR warriors. Keep being stubborn, and Scroll's logo will be forever branded on you, haha."
KOL Crypto Weituo stated, "Without making judgments about right or wrong, there are some takeaways from these two dialogues that I think everyone needs to know."
The "halal era" of raising valuations and funding solely by aligning with certain ideologies is over.
Please spend money on people who truly know how to communicate with retail communities; those who don't know how to speak should keep quiet.
As a project party in the crypto space, you are wrong, and retail investors are right; do not compete with retail investors in research capabilities.
It’s best to consider yourself a retail investor and spend some time playing with what they love most.
Brainwash VCs, not yourself.
Some also told Rushi that this is entirely a malicious debate, "Toghrul's technical comments have nothing to do with Scroll's poor community management. This is a great mobilization to get those who have been harmed to publicly support you, but you must recognize that this is not 'a good-natured public technical discussion.'"
However, Rushi believes that his response post has nothing to do with technical issues but merely points out that Toghrul's attitude towards him and the Movement team is filled with malice and insult. "I have remained silent before because I can handle it myself, but I will not tolerate any insults and harm towards my team."
