Movement Labs is a startup project that raised $38 million in Series A funding earlier this year, and the Layer 2 blockchain called Movement has recently gained global attention.
The two founders, Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, were students at Vanderbilt University. They first met in college, where they recognized each other’s fascination with blockchain technology and quickly bonded, dreaming of building a business together, which led to them dropping out of college and founding the company in 2022 .
Although the mainnet has not yet launched, Movement is attracting market interest for three main reasons:
First, they use Move, a programming language developed by Meta (formerly Facebook) when they were still in the blockchain business. Meta exited its blockchain business due to regulatory issues, and former employees from related departments created Aptos and Sui.
Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche during Korea Blockchain Week. Source: Korea Blockchain Week
The second reason is that they belong to the ‘Layer 2’ sector, which was very popular in the crypto industry from last year to early this year. Layer 2 is widely used to maintain the security of Ethereum while reducing transaction costs. It has advantages in attracting initial users or selling tokens due to high investor interest.
The final reason is that they aim to be a “multi-chain” Layer 2 that can transfer assets across multiple blockchains. The Ethereum Layer 2 market is already quite saturated, but there has been no significant success story for a multi-chain project, which is a relatively unexplored area in the market.
The team has already made significant progress in technological development. They launched a public testnet at the end of July and in recent tests recorded up to 12,000 transactions per second. Currently, the Tier 2 with the highest TPS on Ethereum is Polygon with around 190 TPS.
Both founders recently sat down with BeInCrypto in an interview and said that several financial institutions have shown interest in their project.
Q. What area will Movement specialize in as Tier 2?
We plan to focus on absorbing the demand for stablecoins. It is an area of high market demand, and if transactions can be done much faster using Layer 2, we believe there will be more users. We are also very interested in the gaming sector. In particular, we want to try to introduce users to gaming on mobile devices.
Q. What advantages does Movement have over other Layer 2 systems?
It is fast, delivers overwhelming performance, and responds efficiently to hacking.
Q. Many Ethereum Layer 2 systems have been introduced, but they often fail to sustain impressive results after the initial hype. How does the Movement intend to tackle this problem?
That’s right. The Layer 2s that have appeared so far have not significantly improved Ethereum’s user experience. Speed and transaction processing volume are basic requirements, but they were not supported and did not significantly increase usage. We think we will get different results because we have solved these problems.
Q. The US presidential election has sparked a debate over policy for the blockchain/crypto industry. As Meta’s example showed, regulation has a lot to do with the crypto industry.
Of the discussions around the world about crypto, policy is the most important. In the US, government support has a huge impact on project growth. It is important to have clear rules as they determine the direction of token launches and project foundations. It is also necessary for the government to provide a single set of guidelines in case any disputes arise between stakeholders while using the app.
The co-founders of Movement Labs sat down with BeInCrypto for an interview
Q. It seems that you are showing a lot of interest in the Asian market. Tell us about the direction of your global operations.
We are very community-oriented, with more than twenty developer communities around the world, including in Asia such as Vietnam and Thailand. We also want to activate them in other countries.
We focus on emerging markets because they have a high growth rate. We want to give users from different chains the opportunity to cross over to emerging markets. Our vision is to have a global community, where experts learn new languages and bring in users from all over the world.”
Q. Movement Labs is the official conference partner of this year’s Korea Blockchain Week. This was not the case for conferences elsewhere in Asia around the same time. Are you particularly interested in Korea?
Looking at the success of Aptos (APT) and Sui (SUI), Korea appears to be a country where the Movement’s ecosystem can well establish itself. The consumer ecosystem appears to be a force. Most Move projects have done well in Korea so far. That is why we have become an official partner of KBW this time. Korean investors seem to be very interested in apps that use the Move language.
We are actively working with Korean game companies, we are discussing with one or two teams and we are talking with one company about mobile apps. When it comes to mobile apps, we are very interested in how we can implement an environment where Gen Z can be on board.
