Translation: Nancy, PANews
Recently, the Ethereum L2 Movement based on the Move language sparked an airdrop craze, achieving a 'Grand Slam' with its exchange launch, and briefly entering the $10 billion FDV club. Against this backdrop, investment firm Primitive Ventures shared its investment story in Movement, with founding partner Dovey Wan being one of the participants in Movement's Series A financing.
Looking back at 2023, the Primitive Ventures team initially decided to forgo investing in Movement, but this decision was ultimately overturned by Dovey Wan, prompting the team to reassess the project. Today, $MOVE has officially launched—this is undoubtedly an epic story about how a non-consensus and reverse investment decision ultimately became the 'main character' of the industry. Even more surprising is that all of this was built by two college dropouts. This article will delve into Primitive Ventures' struggles and reflections in investment decisions, as well as Movement's growth and transformation over the past 20 months.
Veto
Initially, Movement was just a decentralized application (dApp) based on Aptos, but after the Aptos ecosystem faced liquidity challenges last year, the team decided to pivot to other platforms. Movement's vision is to overcome the limitations of the Move ecosystem and build a bridge connecting Move and EVM, but at that time, the market was too niche and challenging, especially considering the limited resources of the team, which consisted of two college dropouts.
Although Primitive Ventures has consistently supported alternative VM narratives and young entrepreneurs, it is hard to envision how Movement could compete with Sui and Aptos, which have strong resource backing. These two projects are well-funded, have extensive networks, and are regarded as the 'nobility' of the Move ecosystem. In contrast, Movement seems to have bleak prospects, which is why Primitive Ventures initially abandoned this investment.
The crypto industry has long favored the principle of 'super brain' supremacy in infrastructure investment, focusing too much on minor technical advancements while neglecting the key human factors that ultimately drive success. This model is not new—Sayre's Third Political Law pointed out that 'the reason academic politics are so malignant is that the stakes are too low.' This law perfectly explains the endless debates among 'super brain researchers' and the intense yet often counterproductive dynamics in intellectually dominated projects.
However, after multiple in-depth communications with Rushi, Dovey presented a brand new perspective: a human-centric investment philosophy. The success of a project does not solely depend on the collective of 'super brains', but rather on those who can transcend technical echo chambers, unite communities, inspire developers, and build sustainable ecosystems. As the industry matures, true entrepreneurs will increasingly be rewarded, rather than mere idealists and crypto geeks, a trend already evident in this cycle's revival of Hyperliquid, Ethena, and Solana.
Adopting a new programming language is not only about demonstrating its technical advantages but also about establishing a sense of identity among developers. This requires not just technical breakthroughs but also clear distribution strategies and alignment with developers' identities. More importantly, there must be a charismatic leader who can inspire the next generation of developers, especially those beyond the traditional crypto-native groups, to embrace this language and its ecosystem.
This is precisely what makes Movement and Rushi unique. As an independent third party, Movement has the potential to fill this gap. Rushi's story as a founder showcases resilience, ambition, independence from established paths, and an unyielding spirit, all of which grant him unique founder qualities, making him a worthy 'dark horse' to bet on. From this perspective, Dovey overturned the initial decision, and the team decided to firmly support Rushi, leading to developments that have become part of the history of the crypto industry.
Why choose the Move language?
There is indeed aesthetic fatigue in the market regarding infrastructure, but it is important to discern which work can drive the industry's prospects and which are merely minor optimizations. The industry often falls into pseudo-intellectual micro-optimization debates, while the true power of blockchain lies in the continuous experimentation of human coordination and capital formation.
Currently, the security of smart contracts is one of the main barriers hindering this experimentation. The funds lost each year due to exploits amount to billions of dollars, making the resource cost of maintaining on-chain security far exceed the benefits, thus hindering true mainstream adoption.
At this point, the Move programming language played an important role. The Move language, created by Meta's (formerly Facebook) crypto team, fundamentally rethinks how to write secure, modular, and verifiable smart contracts. In short, the Move programming language aims to provide developers and application builders with a superior programming language overall. As detailed in the Movement Labs documentation, Move aims to provide developers with a safer and more predictable development environment, significantly reducing the risk of catastrophic vulnerabilities.
Essentially, Move prioritizes correctness and security in its programming language design. The result of this design is an optimized development environment that protects developers and users while helping to push experimentation without putting the community at continuous risk.
Thanks to the early work of the Aptos and Sui teams—initiated by engineers and architects who originally developed Move at Meta—Move now has a real track record. Aptos and Sui have demonstrated that Move-based blockchain platforms can deliver strong performance and fulfill their promised security.
Why choose $MOVE?
Despite certain progress in Move-based development, gaps still exist. With 'noble bloodlines', Sui and Aptos have ample resource support, yet they have not fully unleashed their potential in developer adoption (at least not when the team invested in Movement). These two protocols have received significant funding since 2023 but have failed to break through the market cycle and gain true market appeal. Whether due to misaligned priorities or inertia leading to inefficiency, their efforts have not achieved substantial breakthroughs in building grassroots communities and developer ecosystems.
As mentioned earlier, the adoption of a new programming language depends not only on its technical advantages but also on establishing a sense of identity among developers. With the resilience and execution demonstrated by the founding team, Movement Labs has become the ideal team to promote the Move language. In just 18 months, the Movement Labs team has made remarkable progress:
· $45 million in private placement funding
· 60 applications running on the testnet
· Over 2000 hackathon participants
· $150 million in TVL commitments
· 1 million active addresses
· 52 active Movement communities in various regions
Movement Labs' vision is to create a safer and more scalable future for the crypto world, extending the advantages of the Move programming language to a broader crypto ecosystem.
· Ethereum L2 based on the Move language: This solution combines the security and efficiency of the Move language with the world's largest smart contract ecosystem (Ethereum), allowing developers to enjoy the benefits of both development environments simultaneously.
· Fractal: Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) interpreter. To address developer experience and cross-chain integration, the Movement Labs team launched Fractal, allowing developers to convert Solidity codebases into Move-based environments.
· Community-driven participation: Recognizing that technology adoption relies on social norms, the Movement Labs team invested substantial resources in developer education, community engagement, hackathons, and other grassroots activities. They did not impose a top-down vision but invited the community to participate collaboratively, creating an environment conducive to growth.
Why choose Rushi?
The crypto market has gradually deviated from its original cyberpunk spirit, becoming increasingly dominated by the privileged and elite. At the core of Primitive Ventures' values is a steadfast commitment to 'prioritizing substance over identity'—focusing on meaningful growth potential rather than superficial lineage or background investments.
For years, Primitive Ventures has consistently supported anonymous founders and entrepreneurs facing adversity, exposing the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed elites. This belief has deeply resonated with us for those founders who, despite lacking resources, have gone further through resilience and perseverance.
Embodying the spirit of the 'Roman Empire,' the Movement Labs team strives to build an ecosystem from scratch—an inclusive, resilient, and meritocratic ecosystem. Just as ancient Rome was a city built by people of all classes—welcoming not only the elite but also outsiders, exiles, refugees, and those from lower social strata—Movement Labs is creating a home for these 'homeless developers.' Their strategy is to provide a supportive environment for talented developers lacking high-end resources or connections, ensuring that the drive for innovation comes from ability rather than privilege.
In this market cycle, we have seen a decisive shift in the founder community: those who deeply understand global community and culture are becoming the dominant force—this is also a key reason for our investment in Movement and Berachain, and even Solana's revival has benefited from East-West collaboration. As second-generation Indian founders, Rushi and Smokey bring a fresh perspective, combining Eastern philosophy with Western technical and capital market expertise.
Their true qualities stand out: humility, openness, rapid iteration, and disinterest in politics or ranking games. For example, Rushi still lives in a small rental unit and has promised to only do laundry properly after the 'war-time' chaos of the Movement TGE (Token Generation Event) ends (as shown in the picture). This unembellished resilience embodies the spirit of a new generation of builders.
When the Movement testnet launched, it sparked widespread criticism due to its task design, with many users complaining about the burden of tasks on Twitter. The team's response was a model of transparency. Within 10 minutes of receiving feedback, Rushi initiated a live stream to directly address community concerns. He released a detailed written clarification within an hour, ensuring community members felt their voices were heard and valued.
We rarely encounter a team that responds to criticism so swiftly and remains grounded. Rushi's leadership is characterized by honesty and straightforwardness, qualities that stem from his background. He is very willing to interact with the community in real-time, attending over 50 different breakout sessions during meetings to understand grassroots sentiments and developer dilemmas, inspiring many peers.
Building an ecosystem requires significant coordination and trust, and Rushi, as a first-time founder, has shown exceptional performance in establishing meaningful relationships. At the beginning of 2023, when GMX core contributor Coinflip introduced Movement to Primitive Ventures, the team was impressed by Rushi's strong support. Despite being 20 years apart in age, Coinflip's pride in Rushi's growth was evident, demonstrating Rushi's ability to build deep trust across generations.
Some may think that 'community-driven' is mutually exclusive to raising millions in private placement funding. But is that really the case? The ultimate goals of private investors and the community are aligned: the project's success and the positive effects it brings.
The essence of venture capital lies in supporting bold reverse investments: backing ideas and founders when no one else dares to take risks. This is the true spirit of 'risk' capital.
We resonate with this perspective, even though Primitive Ventures does not follow a typical venture capital playbook and does not rely on external capital like most VCs. Since Primitive Ventures is 100% self-funded, every investment is a true venture. This shared commitment connects us closely with early community members who also believe in the project's potential.
What people truly resent is not the venture capital investment itself, but the culture of exclusivity, privilege, family background games, as well as hypocrisy and politics. When projects prioritize funding milestones over actual outcomes and genuine community engagement, even openly disparaging others as 'electronic beggars,' this deviation from the original cypherpunk spirit and financial populism ultimately leads to failure.
Under the leadership of Rushi and Coop, Movement Labs has proven that these forces can be harmonized. By prioritizing transparency, humility, and execution, they have shown how to build a lasting project that remains true to community values.
Korean market and financial populism
Tokens represent a financialized belief system, where market dynamics, human nature, and social psychology are key factors driving growth and adoption. The interaction of these elements creates a unique interplay between financial incentives and community participation, shaping how products resonate with their target audience. For crypto founders, entrepreneurship is a multidimensional challenge that requires mastery of capital markets as well as cultural development and technical adaptation.
The Korean market is a typical example of financial populism in practice. In our in-depth analysis of the Korean market, we explored (Culture and Capital Intertwined: Decoding the Landscape of the Korean Crypto Market), highlighting the country's significant wealth gap and intense social and peer pressure, which not only led to the world's lowest birth rate but also fostered a loyal fan culture—willing to invest in projects that resonate with them, both spiritually and economically, in a 'YOLO' (You Only Live Once) manner. If founders can invest time in building local connections, nurturing 'local heroes,' and maintaining a continued presence, they can cultivate a strong fan base.
The Movement Labs team deeply understands these unique market characteristics and has adjusted their strategies accordingly. By organizing local developer workshops, establishing local community centers and hotlines, and becoming the main sponsor of Korea Blockchain Week, they have demonstrated a deep commitment to the Korean market. This hands-on approach has earned them a reputation that aligns closely with regional cultural and economic differences.
The last international project to engage deeply with the Korean market and conduct grassroots promotion before its official launch was Cosmos, but after the Terra collapse, the market left a void for the rise of a new generation of crypto leaders. Movement Labs is poised to fill this gap.
The outcome is evident: the $MOVE TGE is the hottest event in this year's Korean crypto market. On the first day of TGE, $MOVE's premium on local CEX in Korea surged to 100%, with Upbit's price trajectory significantly outperforming Binance, while $MOVE's trading volume became the highest for the entire year. TGE and price movements are the most powerful marketing strategies for any project, and $MOVE successfully conquered the Korean market with its strong momentum.
MOVE premium on Korean CEX (source: @kysmeplzz)
If Move represents the next evolutionary leap for smart contracts, then Movement Labs is undoubtedly the driving force to ensure this potential is realized—this potential is not constrained by geography or demographics but is seamlessly integrated into the global crypto ecosystem. Embracing the spirit of the Roman Empire, Movement Labs is building a digital global city that welcomes everyone: developers, users, and communities from all corners of the global crypto space. This city thrives on cohesion, transcending age, race, language, nationality, and faith, uniting people in the pursuit of innovation and inclusivity.
As Rushi said on TGE night: 'The work has only just begun.' Welcome to join Movement.
