Written by Willson Lee, core contributor of Biteye
Editor: Crush, core contributor of Biteye
01 Introduction
Faster and more secure blockchains have always been the core narrative driving the continuous development of technology in the crypto industry. From the endless L2 expansion technologies to high-performance public chains such as Solana, all of them are exploring the boundaries of blockchain performance and security to provide blockchain users with a better experience.
With the explosive emergence of L1/L2, most of them have become "zombie chains". The market tells us that superior technology is not the only factor for success. L1/L2 still needs to make great efforts to build its own ecosystem.
EVM compatibility is an important criterion for us to distinguish blockchains. Ultra-high-performance public chains usually abandon EVM compatibility to obtain sufficiently strong performance, such as Solana, Aptos, and Sui.
Avalanche, Polygon, etc. take EVM compatibility into consideration and do not pursue extreme performance to ensure that the prosperous Ethereum ecosystem can be seamlessly transferred to themselves.
The trade-off between EVM compatibility and performance reflects whether the blockchain should give up some aspects that are easy to transform into its own ecosystem for the sake of ultimate performance. The core reason behind this is the limitations of Solidity and EVM themselves.
The Move language has been highly anticipated since its birth. As a new smart contract language developed and designed by Facebook (now META), Move has been designed specifically for encrypted assets since its birth.
Compared with programming languages such as Solidity commonly used in the Ethereum ecosystem, Move highlights "security" and "high performance" in its logic design.
Without the need for L2, MOVE reduces the storage space and computational cost of blockchain transactions through an optimization technique called "module packaging". Module packaging reduces storage and indexing costs by packaging multiple smart contracts into one module, and increases execution speed by reducing the steps of bytecode execution.
This also allows the TPS of the Move public chain to often exceed tens of thousands, and can even continue to expand to the 100,000 level.
Aptos and Sui, as the twin stars of Move, once achieved impressive market performance, but there is still a certain gap between them and the traditional EVM ecosystem in terms of ecosystem construction, which also makes the performance of the twin stars weak.
Movement is the game changer for the current Move ecosystem. Movement is committed to connecting the security and high performance advantages of the Move language with the liquidity and huge user base of the EVM system to achieve a combination of advantages.
Through the Movement SDK, developers do not need to write Move code, but can automatically convert Solidity scripts into opcodes that Move can understand, achieving interoperability compatible with Ethereum and other EVM networks, perfectly combining the advantages of the Move language with the prosperous Ethereum ecosystem.
02 Product solutions and advantages
2.1 Core components: M1 and M2
Movement consists of two core components, M1 and M2. Through the combination of M1 and M2, it provides a secure, efficient and decentralized blockchain ecosystem.
As a general Move-EVM blockchain, M1 gradually evolves into a decentralized sorter, while M2, as a zero-knowledge Layer 2 based on Move + EVM, realizes the security and efficiency of smart contracts, enabling users and developers to innovate and operate on a unified platform.
M1: M1 is a community-driven blockchain network based on the Move language, with the advantages of good compatibility and scalability.
Good compatibility
There is a problem of camp division within the Move ecosystem: Aptos and Sui, as the twin stars of Move, although both originated from Facebook's blockchain project, they differ in technical implementation and goals, so the Move languages of Aptos and Sui are actually completely different languages, which leads to confusion and division among developers when choosing. Aptos is closer to the Move language in the Facebook DM project, while Sui has been iterating on this basis for six months and is more similar to Solana's semantics and consensus mechanism. Therefore, Aptos Move is more secure, while Sui Move has higher speed and compilation efficiency.
Solution: Movement built an RPC translation mechanism to compile Sui Move and Aptos Move into the same bytecode, thus achieving compatibility. In addition, they developed an EVM interpreter called Fractal, which allows developers to deploy EVM smart contracts on Movement. As a result, Movement users can operate on the liquidity of EVM while experiencing a unique execution environment and a vibrant ecosystem.
Scalable: M1 will serve as the first general-purpose Move-EVM blockchain, driven by its own independent set of validators, and will then gradually evolve into a decentralized sorter supporting M2 and other Rollups built on the Move Stack.
M1 was designed to be decentralized by allowing validators to start quickly, inheriting the security of existing Snowman validators, while requiring minimal hardware. As the network matures during Parthenon testing, more community validators will be allowed to join the network, with the ultimate goal of achieving permissionless decentralization. This will ultimately enable the first permissionless decentralized shared ordering unit, supporting M2.
In addition, M1 creates the most economically viable shared sorting unit because all transaction fees are distributed back to the token staking validator network, creating a flywheel effect that incentivizes more validators to join the network for higher returns. As sorting fees gradually decrease, M1 will become the center of the next generation of Rollups because it becomes a staking center, ultimately incentivizing Rollups to use decentralized shared sorters.
Source: https://x.com/movementlabsxyz/status/1747746334797410811/photo/1
M2: M2 is the first zero-knowledge Layer 2 (MEVM) based on Move + EVM, running on Ethereum, supported by Celestia's DA, bringing MoveVM natively to Ethereum. M2 combines Move's strong ownership model with EVM's liquidity to provide a secure and efficient smart contract development platform. It not only supports Aptos Move and Sui Move, but also embeds the EVM interpreter MEVM, enabling Sui, Aptos, and EVM users to operate on the same Layer 2. Through high TPS and instant finality, M2 is able to support large-scale financial transactions and decentralized applications, while providing modular customization options to adapt to different project needs and achieve efficient and flexible blockchain solutions.
In summary, M1 creates a scalable consensus layer that is compatible with Move and EVM, and independently creates a native Move consensus and ecosystem; M2 is responsible for Solidity-Move conversion and transaction execution, directly cutting into the EVM ecosystem and becoming a bridge for direct communication between Move and EVM.
Source: https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_18939.html
2.2 Developers’ entry point: Movement SDK
Movement SDK is Movement's innovative development tool that allows developers to easily build modularity and interoperability between Move and EVM environments.
The Movement SDK combines the security and resource management features of MoveVM with the flexibility and adaptability of Solidity, enabling developers to build and deploy Move-based infrastructure and applications in any distributed environment.
It mainly consists of three core components: MoveVM, Fractal, and custom adapters for sorter network and DA service.
MoveVM: It is the core execution engine of the Movement SDK, providing a resource-oriented and strictly controlled environment to run smart contracts. Although both are MOVE languages, Sui Move and Aptos Move are two independent blockchain systems, each with its own virtual machine (VM) and toolkit, which are very different. Movement's modular MoveVM is a multi-purpose virtual machine designed to be fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and other Move ecosystems. It already supports the deployment of Aptos and EVM code, and will soon support the Sui ecosystem.
Fractal: is a compiler that allows developers to seamlessly deploy existing Solidity smart contracts to MoveVM. This bridge function not only provides Solidity developers with a safer and more efficient execution environment, but also retains the original logic and functionality of the Solidity contract.
Custom Adapter: The last core component of the Movement SDK is designed to provide seamless integration with the sorter network and data availability (DA) service, ensuring secure connections with various blockchain networks and services.
The Movement SDK not only provides developers with tools that perfectly integrate Move and EVM, but as part of the M2 framework, it also works with M1 to further enhance the scalability of Movement.
03 Project Progress
According to the Movement official website, there are currently nearly 80 ecological projects deployed on Movement, including star projects such as Babylon and Ethena.
In the tabs below the project, we can see that it includes projects in various different development languages, which demonstrates the strong compatibility and ecological potential of Movement.
Source: https://movementlabs.xyz/ecosystem/page/1
Note: Movement has launched a testnet activity. You can follow the tutorial to participate and get potential airdrop opportunities.
https://twitter.com/BiteyeCN/status/1818523443203358919
04 Team Background
4.1 Core members
Movement Labs’ co-founders are Rushi Manche, 21, and Cooper Scanlon, 24, both of whom attended Vanderbilt University.
Source: https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_18939.html
Rushi Manche has been programming since age 14 and initially worked at health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, where he was responsible for the migration of cloud infrastructure.
He started his career in the field of distributed systems and databases, and later came into contact with cryptocurrency during college. This experience laid a solid foundation in the field of technology and paved the way for him to enter the cryptocurrency field in the future.
Rushi’s interest in cryptocurrency began when he learned during college that Facebook was developing its own blockchain project.
He first learned about the news through a New York Times article, which piqued his interest.
At the time, Cosmos had only 5 users and Ethereum had only a few hundred users, while Facebook’s user base numbered in the billions, which presented huge potential for mass adoption of crypto technology.
Rushi studied the Move language in depth and acquired a wealth of knowledge from the Move Book and eventually decided to make a career in this field.
Rushi’s path to entrepreneurship was not an easy one. While at Vanderbilt University, he continued to develop his own projects despite limited resources.
He also shared his experience choosing between Avalanche and Cosmos, ultimately choosing Avalanche as an early backer.
While in college, he also founded Ensemble, an AI-driven test tutoring platform that provides free test preparation materials to high school students.
In 2022, Rushi joined Aptos as a software engineer and personally participated in the development of Move language smart contracts, making outstanding contributions to the core DEX in the ecosystem. This experience made him realize the huge potential of the Move language and inspired his passion for entrepreneurship in this field.
Cooper Scanlon is another co-founder of Movement Labs, and before founding Movement Labs, he built and audited the first yield aggregator using the Move language.
In November 2022, Rushi and Cooper, two Vanderbilt University alumni, decided to drop out of school and co-founded Movement Labs.
The creation of Movement Labs marks a new beginning for Rushi and Cooper in the blockchain field. Their team is committed to introducing the Move language to EVM and promoting the advancement of blockchain technology.
Rushi and Cooper’s entrepreneurial story demonstrates their deep accumulation and courage in technology and innovation. Despite many challenges, they remain steadfast in advancing their vision and contributing to the development and application of blockchain technology through Movement Labs.
4.2 Financing
Rootdata shows that Movement received investment from Binance Labs in May. In the Series A financing, Movement received investment from top institutions such as Polychain and Hack VC, with a financing amount of 38m. This shows the strong strength of Movement and its market recognition.
Source: https://www.rootdata.com/Projects/detail/Movement?k=OTMxMg%3D%3D
05 Summary and Outlook
Movement Labs has taken a different approach in the fiercely competitive Ethereum L2 track and the emerging Move ecosystem, exploring a potential path that balances performance and ecology, standing out and winning market recognition.
Movment not only achieves the perfect combination of Move and EVM in technology, but also continues to work hard on building an ecosystem, striving to provide developers and users with a safe, efficient and easy-to-use blockchain platform.
As Movement’s infrastructure continues to improve and its ecosystem gradually builds, we expect Movement to bring more innovations and breakthroughs in the future and promote the development of the entire blockchain industry.
