Translated by: Nancy, PANews

Recently, the Ethereum L2 Movement based on the Move language sparked an airdrop frenzy, achieving a 'grand slam' listing on exchanges while briefly entering the billion-dollar FDV club. In this context, investment firm Primitive Ventures shared its investment story in Movement, with founding partner Dovey Wan being one of the co-investors in Movement's Series A funding.

Looking back at 2023, the Primitive Ventures team initially decided to abandon investment in Movement, but this decision was ultimately overturned by Dovey Wan, prompting the team to reassess the project. Now, $MOVE has officially launched—this is undoubtedly an epic story of how a non-consensus and contrarian investment decision ultimately became the 'protagonist' of the industry. Even more surprisingly, this was all built by two college dropouts. This article will delve into Primitive Ventures' struggles and reflections in investment decision-making, as well as Movement's growth and transformation over the past 20 months.

Veto

Initially, Movement was 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 establish a bridge connecting Move and EVM, but at that time the market was too niche and full of challenges, especially considering the limited resources of the team, which consisted of two college dropouts.

Although Primitive Ventures has consistently supported alternative virtual machine (VM) narratives and young entrepreneurs, it is hard to imagine how Movement could compete with Sui and Aptos, which have strong resource support. These two projects are well-funded, well-connected, and hailed as the 'nobility' of the Move ecosystem. In contrast, Movement seems bleak, leading Primitive Ventures to initially abandon this investment.

The crypto industry has long favored a 'super brain' supremacy principle in its approach to infrastructure investment, focusing excessively on minor technical advancements while neglecting the key human factors that ultimately drive success. This pattern is not new—Sayre's third political law pointed out: 'The academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are too low.' This law perfectly explains the endless debates among 'super brain researchers' and the intense yet often counterproductive dynamics in intellectual-led projects.

However, after multiple in-depth conversations with Rushi, Dovey proposed a new perspective: a human-centered investment philosophy. The success of a project does not solely depend on a group 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 those who are merely idealists and crypto geeks, as evidenced by the revival of Hyperliquid, Ethena, and Solana in this cycle.

Adopting a new programming language not only showcases its technical advantages but is more importantly about establishing a sense of identity among developers. This is not just a technical breakthrough; it requires a clear distribution strategy and alignment with the identity of developers. More crucially, there must be a charismatic leader capable of inspiring the next generation of developers, especially those who transcend 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, a non-reliance on established paths, and relentless effort—qualities that give him a unique founder characteristic and make him a worthy 'dark horse' bet. From this perspective, Dovey overturned the initial decision, and the team decided to firmly support Rushi, and what followed has indeed become a part of crypto industry history.

Why choose the Move language?

There is indeed aesthetic fatigue in the market regarding infrastructure, but it is important to discern which efforts can drive industry 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 ongoing experiments in human coordination and capital formation.

Currently, the security of smart contracts is one of the major obstacles hindering such experimentation. Funds lost annually due to vulnerabilities amount to billions of dollars, making the resource costs needed to maintain on-chain security far exceed the benefits it brings, thus hindering true mainstream adoption.

At this point, the Move programming language played an important role. The Move language, developed by Meta's crypto team (formerly Facebook), 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 an overall superior programming language. As detailed in Movement Labs' documentation, Move aims to offer developers 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 facilitating experimentation without putting the community at constant risk.

Thanks to the initial work of the Aptos and Sui teams—projects 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 powerful performance and fulfill their promised security.

Why choose $MOVE?

Despite some progress in Move-based development, gaps still exist. Projects like Sui and Aptos, which have 'noble lineage', benefit from rich resource support but have failed to fully unleash their potential in developer adoption (at least as was the case when the Movement team was invested in). These two protocols have received substantial funding since 2023 but have not broken through the market cycle to gain true market traction. Whether due to misaligned priorities or inertia causing inefficiencies, their efforts have not made significant 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 TVL commitment

· 1 million active addresses

· 52 active Movement communities in the region

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 advantages of both development environments.

· 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 to Move-based environments.

· Community-driven participation: Recognizing that technology adoption relies on social norms, the Movement Labs team invests substantial resources in developer education, community engagement, hackathons, and other grassroots activities. They do not impose a top-down vision but invite the community to participate in creating a conducive development environment.

Why choose Rushi?

The crypto market is gradually drifting away from its original cyberpunk spirit, becoming increasingly dominated by the privileged and elite. At the core values of the Primitive Ventures team is a steadfast adherence to the principle of 'focusing on substance over identity'—prioritizing meaningful growth potential over superficial pedigree or background investments.

For years, Primitive Ventures has consistently supported anonymous founders and entrepreneurs in adversity, exposing the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed elites. This belief resonates deeply with us for those founders who lack resources but push further through resilience and perseverance.

Embracing the core spirit of the 'Roman Empire', the Movement Labs team strives to build an ecosystem from scratch—an inclusive, resilient, and talent-driven ecosystem. Just as ancient Rome was a city built by people from all walks of life—not only welcoming elites but also embracing outsiders, exiles, refugees, and those from lower social classes. Movement Labs is creating a home for these 'homeless developers'. Their strategy is to provide a supportive environment for talented developers who lack 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 communities and cultures are becoming the dominant force—this is also a key reason why we invested in Movement and Berachain, and even the revival of Solana benefited from East-West collaboration. As second-generation Indian founders, Rushi and Smokey bring a fresh perspective by combining Eastern philosophy with Western expertise in technology and capital markets.

Their real qualities stand out: humility, openness, rapid iteration, and disinterest in political or ranking games. For instance, Rushi still lives in a small rental apartment and has promised to only do his laundry properly after the 'war-time' chaos of the Movement TGE (Token Generation Event) ends (as shown in the picture). This unadorned resilience embodies the spirit of a new generation of builders.

When the Movement testnet launched, its task design drew widespread criticism, with many users complaining about the heavy task load on Twitter. The team's response exemplified transparency. Within 10 minutes of receiving feedback, Rushi initiated a live stream to directly address community concerns. He published a detailed written clarification within an hour, ensuring community members felt heard and valued.

We rarely encounter a team that responds to criticism so swiftly while remaining 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.

It is important to note that building an ecosystem requires a lot of coordination and trust, and Rushi, as a first-time founder, has excelled in establishing meaningful interpersonal relationships. In early 2023, when GMX core contributor Coinflip introduced Movement to Primitive Ventures, the team was impressed by Rushi's steadfast support. Despite a 20-year age difference, Coinflip's pride in Rushi's growth was evident, proving Rushi's ability to build deep trust across generations.

Some may argue that 'community-driven' is mutually exclusive with raising millions through private rounds. But is that really the case? The ultimate goal of private investors and the community is the same: the success of the project and its positive effects.

The essence of venture capital lies in supporting bold contrarian investments: backing ideas and founders when no one else dares to take the risk. This is the true spirit of 'risk' capital.

We agree with this viewpoint, although Primitive Ventures does not follow a typical venture capital playbook and does not rely on external capital like most VCs do. Because Primitive Ventures is 100% self-funded, every investment is a true venture capital spirit. This shared commitment connects us closely with early community members who also believe in the project's potential.

What people truly resent is not venture capital investment itself, but the culture of circles, a sense of privilege, family background games, and hypocrisy and politics. When projects place funding milestones above actual results and genuine community engagement, even openly belittling others as 'electronic beggars', this deviation from the initial crypto-punk spirit and financial populism ultimately leads to failure.

Under the leadership of Rushi and Coop, Movement Labs has proven that these forces can be aligned. By prioritizing transparency, humility, and execution, they have demonstrated how to build a lasting project that is loyal to community values.

Korean market and financial populism

Tokens are a financialized belief system, where market dynamics, human nature, and social psychology are key factors driving growth and adoption. The interplay of these elements creates a unique interaction between financial incentives and community participation, shaping how products resonate with their target audiences. For crypto founders, entrepreneurship is a multidimensional challenge, requiring mastery over capital markets as well as cultural development and technological 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 Korean Crypto Market Landscape), where the country's enormous wealth gap, along with strong social and peer pressure, has not only resulted in the world's lowest birth rate but has also cultivated a loyal fan culture willing to invest in projects that resonate with them, whether on a spiritual or economic level. If founders can invest time to build local connections, nurture 'local heroes', and maintain a continuous 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 a major sponsor of the Korean Blockchain Week, they have demonstrated a deep commitment to the Korean market. This hands-on approach has earned them a reputation highly aligned with regional cultural and economic differences.

The last international project to penetrate the Korean market so deeply and conduct grassroots promotion before its official launch was Cosmos, but after the collapse of Terra, the market was left vacant for the rise of a new generation of crypto leaders. Movement Labs is ready to fill this void.

The results speak for themselves: the $MOVE TGE was the hottest event in the Korean crypto market this year. On the first day of TGE, $MOVE's premium on local CEX in Korea soared to 100%, with Upbit's price performance significantly outperforming Binance, and $MOVE's trading volume becoming the highest trading pair of the entire year. TGE and price trends are the most powerful marketing strategies for any project, and $MOVE successfully conquered the Korean market with strong momentum.

MOVE premium on Korean CEX (Source: @kysmeplzz)

If Move represents the next evolutionary leap of smart contracts, then Movement Labs is undoubtedly the driving force ensuring this potential is realized—this potential is not limited by geography or demographics, but rather seamlessly integrates into the global crypto ecosystem. Upholding 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 domain. This city thrives on cohesion, transcending age, race, language, nationality, and belief to unite people in the pursuit of innovation and inclusivity.

As Rushi said on TGE night: 'The work has just begun.' Welcome to join Movement.