Movement went from 25 million to 7 billion dollars FDV in two years, a 300x Web3 startup story
Movement has also gained substantial support from Asian investors, with the key element being the backing of Singapore's Web3 capital.Author: Julian, Web3Future
On December 9, Movement (MOVE) was launched on exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, and Upbit. On December 10, MOVE reached a peak price of $1.4, currently priced around $0.7, with a total market capitalization of $7 billion.
With the launch on all top exchanges and a market cap exceeding $10 billion, the airdrop and other marketing efforts have received a lot of praise from the community. Movement's performance is undoubtedly one of the star projects in this bull market.
Just two years ago, Movement was a project with a valuation of only $25 million, incubated by the Avalanche (AVAX) team. I wrote this article to summarize the Web3 success journey of the Movement project, hoping it can provide some insights.
The journey of the Movement project can be summarized in one sentence as a continuous quest for "finding a father." It can be roughly divided into four stages:
Avalanche: Secured incubation resources from Avalanche and brought in star angels.
Aptos: Received investment from Aptos, reused Aptos code, and quickly acquired Move lineage.
Binance: Secured endorsement and sponsorship from Binance, leveraging numerous resources in Asia.
Community: Large-scale airdrop, emphasizing community and KOL marketing to gain retail reputation.
Secured incubation resources from Avalanche and brought in star angels
Movement's start was actually very difficult, launching during the worst bear market of 2022. At that time, the Movement team members mainly came from Avalanche and its partners.
According to early funding introductions, Movement was initially positioned as a community-first modular Move Layer 1, incubated by Ava Labs (the Avalanche development company), with supporters including DEX BENQI on Avalanche, Blizzard Fund (Avalanche ecosystem fund), Colony (Avalanche ecosystem accelerator), and Avalaunch (IDO platform on Avalanche).
Avalanche's support allowed Movement to secure a number of star angel investors. According to RootData and early funding introductions, Movement's seed investments included several prominent North American institutions and individuals: Borderless Capital, BeraChain co-founder Smokey, and Gitcoin co-founder and former Ethereum Foundation member Scott Moore, among others.
In addition to the aforementioned seed round investments, other incomplete statistics show that Movement's seed investors also included well-known figures in the Avalanche community such as the Ulaj Brothers, Jon West, who served as a strategic advisor at the Ethereum Foundation, Jonathan Chang, COO of Nibiru Chain, core contributor of GMX coinflipcanada, founder of blockchain company Gumzilla Theodore Agranat, founder of Vorto Gaming Sonny Azeez, Polychain GP Christian Sullivan, and angel investors from JP Morgan's Crypto Division, as well as market maker Gotbit.
It can be said that Movement not only secured its first pot of gold from Avalanche but also brought in star angel resources from North America. Such a luxurious lineup of investors laid the foundation for Movement's subsequent financing and endorsements. For example, Polychain GP Christian Sullivan, as a seed investor, set the stage for Polychain to lead the next round of investment in Movement.
Received investment from Aptos, reused Aptos code, and quickly acquired Move lineage
Among the many luxurious investors, Aptos is not considered Movement's "father" in terms of endorsement and financial support. People close to Aptos Labs have indicated that Aptos's investment in Movement was only $50,000, while others claim it was $500,000.
However, Aptos remains an irreplaceable investor for Movement. Because Movement not only received investment and endorsement from Aptos but also based its programming language on Aptos Move, adopting similar architecture and design concepts, quickly completing part of the technical development and acquiring "Move lineage."
In terms of architecture, both Aptos and Movement are linear blockchains; in transaction processing TPS, both use the Block-STM optimistic parallel execution engine. Originally, Move, as an open-source language, does not have the so-called "orthodoxy" in the Move ecosystem track like the Ethereum ecosystem.
However, Aptos and Sui, as the earliest Move duos originating from Meta Diem, have competition and differences in their routes and philosophies. Therefore, both Aptos and Sui are trying to seize their own discourse power and orthodoxy in the Move ecosystem.
For Aptos, investing in Movement and requiring Movement to base its programming language on Aptos Move, adopting similar architecture and design concepts, is an important step in strengthening Aptos Move's discourse power. For Movement, quickly reusing Aptos Move development means it does not have to start from scratch to complete the technical development design of a Move public chain.
There is also a small episode here; Movement has also been in contact with Sui. According to investors from Sui's development company, Mysten Labs, their strategy is to personally develop three Move public chains, and the priority for investing in other teams' Move public chains is not high.
In June 2024, Mysten Labs announced the launch of a decentralized storage and data availability protocol called Walrus, which is a decentralized storage network built on Sui, featuring a new governance token, WAL. Perhaps in 2025, we will see a third Move public chain developed by Mysten Labs. After Movement, we will definitely see more Move public chains emerge.
Secured endorsement and sponsorship from Binance, leveraging numerous resources in Asia
Movement also received substantial support from Asian investors, with the key element being support from Singapore's Web3 capital. Movement was able to open up in Asian institutions, and the endorsement from Binance and some VCs undoubtedly played an important role, which is also why there is much community discussion about Movement being a VC coin and a "girlfriend coin."
Many community members and Movement partners have stated that Movement might be the "crazy" project second only to IO. After securing investment from Binance in the first half of this year, Movement leveraged the expectations of being listed on Binance and Dovey Wan's Primitive Ventures to rapidly tap into numerous institutional resources in Asia, entering with a valuation of $400 million to $1 billion.
After bringing in Binance's investment this year, Movement's logo was also upgraded from black and white to a yellow very similar to Binance's visual identity. Later, at industry events such as the Blockchain Week in Korea and Singapore, it sponsored a large number of advertising brand exposures.
Regarding the discussion of "girlfriend coins," this is inherently a subjective issue, and I won't analyze it too much. My judgment is that one role of VC institutions is to provide endorsements and hype; Movement has maximized the expectations of Binance and VC endorsements within a reasonable operational scope. Movement's success is attributed to seizing the right timing, location, and human resources, stemming from the project's strong resource integration and operational capabilities.
The two co-founders of Movement, Rushi and Cooper, are both very young entrepreneurs. An investor close to the Movement team once stated that the two founders practiced their pitch skills over 200 times in front of their incubating angel investors before their first public event, which is why they possess strong persuasive abilities and communication skills in external communications despite their youth.
Moreover, Binance was the last exchange to announce the listing of Movement; prior to this, Movement had already secured listings with Coinbase, Upbit, OKx, and other exchanges. Therefore, it was relatively reasonable for Binance to list the highly anticipated Movement.
Large-scale airdrop, emphasizing community and KOL marketing to gain retail reputation
If it were only the above, Movement could only be considered a successful VC coin. However, Movement's airdrop plan, along with its emphasis on collaboration with the community and KOLs, has earned it a very good reputation.
In this year's L1/L2 public chain airdrop plans, it has evolved from the early large-scale distribution to low guarantees, witch hunts, and points systems, even leading to extreme opposition between the community and project parties, such as mouse trading airdrops and electronic beggars.
Movement's airdrop has, to some extent, reversed the poor state of public chain airdrops. According to Panews statistics, this round of Movement's airdrop exceeded $1.45 billion, with 98.5% of eligible addresses receiving over $100 in airdrop amounts, and all qualifying addresses received airdrops without any witch hunts. Additionally, there have been no rumors in the community about Movement airdropping to suspected mouse trading addresses.
In terms of collaboration with the community and KOLs, Movement has also been very proactive, showing none of the arrogance seen in some VC projects. For example, Movement conducted a global KOL promotion round with numerous KOLs, hiring influential analysts Jason Chen Jian and Australian Master Brother as consultants in the Chinese community. These community-focused initiatives have garnered a good marketing reputation.
After all, VC projects are primarily accountable to their sources of power. If a project's success and global expansion hinge on VCs and exchanges, the project parties will only care about the thoughts of VCs and exchanges, rather than valuing communication with the community.
