Written by: Alvis, Mars Finance

With the price of the Sui token reaching a new all-time high and the rapid rise of Aptos in the Korean community, blockchain projects based on the Move language are ushering in a new stage of development. Amid this wave of enthusiasm, Movement Labs is also accelerating its own projects. Co-founder Rushi Manche recently posted exciting news on social media: "Movement mainnet is coming soon." This statement heralds the upcoming launch of Movement's token generation event (TGE), marking the official development of this project. A critical step in the market.

As the successor to the Move language, Movement demonstrates strong potential in technical architecture, consensus mechanisms, and transaction throughput. With its outstanding performance and unique innovations, Movement has not only attracted widespread attention from developers but has also received high recognition from the industry.

This article will delve into the technical highlights, tokenomics design, and future development strategies of the Movement project, helping you gain a comprehensive understanding of the potential and opportunities behind this rapidly rising blockchain ecosystem.

Founding team and mission

Movement Labs was co-founded by former Aptos engineer Rushi Manche and blockchain entrepreneur Cooper Scanlon. Both founders participated in the technical development of Libra/Diem and possess deep blockchain technical backgrounds and industry insights. The founding intention of Movement Labs is to promote the Move language developed by Facebook (now Meta) in the Libra/Diem project as the standard for blockchain smart contracts, establishing a secure, efficient, and highly scalable blockchain infrastructure.

The team members come from several well-known blockchain projects, including Biconomy, Sui/Mysten Labs, and Fluid Finance. The team members have rich experience in blockchain development and fintech, dedicated to creating a blockchain platform that supports high throughput transactions and secure digital asset management.

Movement's financing history and capital support

Since the project's inception, Movement Labs has completed several rounds of financing and achieved significant capital support. Specifically, it includes:

  • Pre-Seed round financing: In 2023, Movement Labs completed a $3.4 million Pre-Seed round financing led by institutions such as Varys Capital and dao5. This round of financing provides funding support for the project's technical development and early ecosystem construction.

  • Series A financing: In April 2023, Movement Labs completed a $38 million Series A financing led by Polychain Capital. With the completion of this round of financing, the Movement development team can accelerate product development and network deployment.

  • Binance Labs investment: In May 2024, Binance Labs also invested in Movement, further strengthening its financial strength and industry influence.

These financings not only demonstrate strong confidence from the capital market in Movement but also provide robust support for its technical development, ecosystem building, and market promotion.

Community growth and market recognition of Movement

Movement Labs' achievements in community building and market recognition cannot be overlooked.

According to the latest data, Movement's Twitter followers have reached 830,000, and Discord community members exceed 820,000, demonstrating its strong appeal and growth potential in the blockchain field. Furthermore, the performance of the Movement test network since its launch has also been impressive, with a cumulative transaction volume of 681 million, active addresses exceeding 15.8 million, and over 46 applications running stably on the test network.

This achievement highlights Movement's robust progress in ecosystem development, especially in the thriving application layer, demonstrating widespread participation from developers and users. Meanwhile, the success of the test network has also laid a solid foundation for the upcoming launch of the Movement mainnet. The active community and the continuous growth of ecosystem projects prove Movement's high recognition and prospects in the market.

Token economics design: total supply and initial circulation of MOVE tokens

MOVE tokens, as the native cryptocurrency of the Movement Network, will become the core support for various functions within the platform after the mainnet launch. According to information released by the Movement Network Foundation, the total supply of MOVE tokens is 10 billion, and the management of its circulation will adopt a gradual unlocking mechanism. Initially, about 22% of the MOVE tokens will enter the circulation market, providing opportunities for early users and ecosystem builders to participate.

Distribution plan for MOVE tokens

To ensure decentralized distribution of tokens while ensuring sustainable development of the ecosystem, the distribution plan for MOVE tokens clearly allocates most of the token resources to support the community, ecosystem building, and reward early participants. The specific allocation ratios are as follows:

  • Ecosystem and community: 40% of this portion of tokens will be used to support the long-term development of the Movement Network, including ecosystem building, partnerships, and developer rewards. Movement plans to incentivize more developers and projects to join its ecosystem through this portion of tokens, promoting the widespread application of the Move language in various decentralized applications.

  • Initial claim: 10% of the initial claim portion of tokens will be allocated to eligible early users and supporters as a reward for their contributions to early testing, community building, and other efforts in Movement. Users can gain claim eligibility by participating in activities, test networks, and other means.

  • Foundation: 10% of this portion of tokens will be held by the Movement Network Foundation for platform development, operational funds, and ecosystem support. The foundation's tokens will be used to ensure the long-term development and stable operation of the network.

  • Early contributors: 17.5% of this portion of tokens will be allocated to team members and project supporters who participated in the early development of the Movement network. Their contributions have provided significant impetus for Movement's technical architecture, platform construction, and community expansion.

  • Early investors: 22.5% Early investors will receive a corresponding proportion of MOVE tokens as compensation for their early investment in Movement Labs. As the tokens are gradually unlocked, these investors will receive returns over a certain period.

Unlocking cycles and staking restrictions

The MOVE token implements a gradual unlocking mechanism over 60 months, meaning that within 5 years, the tokens will be gradually released into the market. This setup aims to prevent large-scale selling behavior in the short term and ensure market stability.

At the same time, early-stage team members and investors are unable to participate in staking, meaning they cannot earn rewards through staking, avoiding the abuse of staking rewards or gaining unfair advantages through early participation in staking.

The design of this mechanism aims to align the release rhythm of tokens with market demand and project development pace, avoiding market volatility caused by oversupply. Through this approach, Movement ensures that long-term holders and community members can enjoy stable growth in token unlocking over a period of 5 years.

Functions and uses of MOVE tokens

As the native asset of the Movement Network, MOVE tokens are not just a payment tool; they will deeply participate in multiple key functions within the network. Below are some primary uses of MOVE tokens:

  • Economic security staking: After the Movement mainnet goes live and the staking function is enabled, network validators will be able to stake MOVE tokens, thus participating in maintaining the network's security and consensus mechanism. Through staking, validators can earn corresponding staking rewards and become guardians of the network's security.

  • Gas fee payment: Similar to the Ethereum network, Movement Network's gas fees will be settled in MOVE tokens. All transactions, smart contract executions, and other operations in the Movement ecosystem will consume MOVE tokens as gas fees. This design ensures liquidity for network operations and the utility of tokens.

  • Decentralized governance: MOVE holders will be able to participate in the governance of the Movement Network, proposing and voting on important parameter adjustments for the network. For example, token holders can vote to decide on network upgrades, fee adjustments, changes to protocol parameters, and other issues to achieve true decentralized governance.

  • The native asset of the Movement network: MOVE tokens will also serve as the native asset of the Movement network, which can be used in various scenarios such as liquidity provision, collateral, and payments within the network. Additionally, developers building DApps based on the Movement platform can also use MOVE tokens for liquidity incentives and in-app payments.

Movement's MoveDrop airdrop plan

On November 27, the Movement Network Foundation announced its MoveDrop airdrop plan aimed at rewarding early users and community members of Movement. This airdrop will distribute 1 billion $MOVE tokens (10% of total supply) to the community, with eligible users including participants in Road to Parthenon, winners of Battle of Olympus, Gmovers, designated community members, and builders of the Movement test network.

Users can visit the MoveDrop website and complete registration, with the registration deadline set for December 2, 2024, at 2 PM UTC. After the TGE (coming soon), users can check their eligibility and claim the airdrop. Users who do not register on time will lose the eligibility to claim MoveDrop.

It is worth noting that users can choose to receive $MOVE tokens on the Ethereum mainnet or on the Movement Network mainnet (coming soon), which will grant a 1.25x reward multiplier. The Movement Network Foundation also stated that it will continue to distribute $MOVE tokens through more activities in the future.

Through the MoveDrop airdrop, Movement not only rewards early supporters but also further expands the community base, attracting more users to participate in network construction, assisting the sustainable development of its ecosystem.

Overview of the roadmap

The roadmap for the Movement project clearly outlines several key phases aimed at ensuring stable progress and technical realization of the platform. Below are the phases of the roadmap that have been publicly released so far:

  • Phase 1: Network Genesis, MOVE Token TGE, Launch of Mobile Deposit Contract

  • In this phase, Movement will initiate network genesis, formally issue MOVE tokens, and conduct TGE (Token Generation Event). At the same time, the project will launch a mobile deposit contract to lay the foundation for economic security.

  • Phase 2: Movement Mainnet Launch, Achieving Fast Finality, MOVE Token Staking

  • Entering the second phase, Movement will officially launch the mainnet and achieve its core technology—fast finality, meaning the ability to achieve final confirmation every second. In addition, the staking mechanism for MOVE tokens will also be activated in this phase, allowing users to participate in network security maintenance and receive corresponding rewards.

  • Phase 3: MOVE Stack, MEVM, Shared Sequencer

  • In this phase, Movement will launch its innovative technology stack MOVE Stack and introduce MEVM (Movement Ethereum Virtual Machine) to support Ethereum compatibility. At the same time, plans will be made to implement a shared sequencer to improve transaction processing efficiency and network scalability.

  • Phase 4: Multi-Asset Staking

  • Finally, Movement will support multi-asset staking, providing staking functions for multiple assets within the ecosystem. This phase will further enhance the platform's diversity and flexibility, supporting different types of user needs.

MOVE token TGE and post-confirmation mechanism

The Token Generation Event (TGE) is one of the important milestones of the Movement project. MOVE tokens will be issued before the mainnet goes live, aiming to establish economic security through liquidity deposit contracts. The core goal of this arrangement is to support the post-confirmation mechanism within the Movement network.

Post-confirmations are a unique technical mechanism that enables the Movement network to achieve final confirmation of transactions within 1 second or less. To achieve this goal, Movement needs to pre-flow and construct economic security for MOVE tokens through liquidity deposit contracts before the public mainnet goes online. This way, with the official launch of the network, the post-confirmation mechanism can be immediately put into use, ensuring 1-second finality of transactions and greatly enhancing network efficiency and user experience.

On November 28, the Aevo platform successfully launched Movement (MOVE), marking an important step in the issuance of MOVE tokens and ecosystem building. This launch signifies a new development stage for the project, providing early participation opportunities for a wide range of community members and developers.

Comparison between the Move ecosystem and Ethereum ecosystem

Advantages of the Move ecosystem

The Move language, designed by Facebook for its Libra/Diem project, aims to address the shortcomings in resource management in traditional blockchain technologies, particularly regarding the security, uniqueness, and execution efficiency of digital assets. Compared to Ethereum's Solidity language, Move exhibits significant advantages in several areas:

  • Resource management and security: Move uses a built-in resource management mechanism, treating all assets as scarce resources that can only be copied or deleted with explicit authorization. This design effectively avoids issues such as asset loss or double spending in smart contracts. Compared to Ethereum's Solidity, Move has higher resource security, especially suitable for applications requiring strict asset management.

  • Efficient execution of transactions: The Move language optimizes transaction execution efficiency through static scheduling and serialization mechanisms, capable of handling a large number of high-concurrency transactions, particularly suitable for scenarios requiring high throughput and low latency, such as in finance and digital currency exchanges.

  • Developer friendliness: Compared to Solidity, the design of the Move language is more concise and clear, focusing on the developer experience. With dedicated development tools and SDK support, developers can more easily create, debug, and deploy smart contracts, lowering the development threshold.

Advantages and challenges of the Ethereum ecosystem

Ethereum is undoubtedly the most widely used smart contract platform globally. With the broad support of EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and Solidity language, it has become the core of decentralized applications (DApps) and the DeFi ecosystem. However, as the Ethereum ecosystem evolves, it also faces some technical challenges:

  • High transaction costs and scalability issues: Ethereum's high transaction costs (gas fees) and low TPS (transactions per second) are one of its main bottlenecks, especially during busy network times when transaction fees soar, leading to a decline in user experience.

  • Development complexity: Although Solidity has gained wide application globally, its relatively complex language structure and development process still pose a barrier for some developers. Especially for projects requiring high performance and security, developers often need to make significant optimizations based on the Solidity language.

Therefore, despite the vast and powerful Ethereum ecosystem, with changing demands and technological evolution, the emergence of the Move language and Movement Network provides developers with more choices and innovative space. The Move ecosystem, with its concise, secure, and flexible design, can better meet the needs of specific applications, especially in scenarios requiring fast transactions and high security.

Interoperability between Move and Ethereum ecosystems

Movement's M2 module, serving as a bridge between the Ethereum and Move ecosystems, demonstrates strong interoperability. By supporting EVM compatibility, Movement allows developers to run smart contract code from Aptos, Sui, and Ethereum on its platform simultaneously. This enables developers to leverage the efficient smart contract environment of the Move platform while also enjoying the liquidity and security of the Ethereum ecosystem. This dual compatibility provides developers with more flexibility and further enhances the competitiveness of the Move ecosystem in the blockchain industry.

Comparison of Movement with Sui and Aptos: Applications of the Move language

The Move language is becoming the core of the new generation of blockchain technologies, with multiple public chain projects adopting it. Aptos, Sui, and Movement are all based on Move but have significant differences in architecture, consensus mechanisms, transaction processing, and ecosystems. Below is a comparative analysis of them:

Architecture

  • Aptos and Movement adopt a linear blockchain architecture, with blocks generated sequentially, and state updates advanced through a large number of transactions.

  • Sui is based on a **DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph)** structure, supporting independent transaction consensus, with higher throughput and parallel processing capabilities.

Consensus and transaction confirmation time (TTF)

  • Aptos uses the AptosBFT protocol to optimize communication between nodes, enhancing efficiency through leader rotation.

  • Sui adopts the Mysticeti consensus algorithm, allowing multiple leaders and reducing transaction delays, significantly lowering CPU burden and ensuring higher throughput.

  • Movement uses Avalanche's Snowman consensus, achieving consensus through majority validator agreement. Although there is a slight delay in decision-making, its mechanism ensures high security and consistency of the network.

In terms of transaction confirmation time (TTF), Sui is the most superior, with an average confirmation time of about 0.5 seconds. However, Movement, through its unique consensus mechanism, provides considerable throughput while ensuring security, making it an ideal choice for enterprise-level applications.

Transaction processing and TPS

  • Aptos and Movement adopt a Block-STM optimistic parallel processing mechanism, assuming that all transactions can be processed in parallel, and retrying in case of conflicts.

  • Sui adopts state access ordering, optimizing based on objects to avoid re-executing transactions, improving TPS and reducing hardware burden.

Although Sui performs excellently in handling efficiency, Movement, with its innovative modular architecture, optimized transaction processing mechanisms, and compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem, demonstrates significant flexibility and scalability potential, particularly suitable for cross-chain and large-scale enterprise-level applications.

Ecosystem

  • Aptos has the most mature ecosystem, covering multiple areas such as DeFi and NFTs, with a rich array of early applications.

  • Sui is accelerating ecosystem building by attracting developers through funding programs, with initial applications already landing.

  • Movement has completed the test network stage, demonstrating strong technical potential. Through its innovative Move SDK, shared sequencer, and compatibility with Ethereum, Movement is providing developers with a more efficient and flexible development environment.

Movement's advantages lie not only in the innovation of its technical architecture but also in its precise grasp of market demands and comprehensive support for developers. Through strong cross-chain compatibility and high-performance infrastructure, Movement is rapidly growing into one of the most promising public chains in the Move ecosystem, showcasing significant advantages, especially in enterprise-level applications and high throughput scenarios.

Prospects of the Movement Network

Innovative ecosystem and market opportunities

As the Movement Network continues to develop, the market is filled with expectations for its prospects. As a high-efficiency blockchain platform based on the Move language, Movement is driving deep transformations in blockchain infrastructure. Its modular architecture and strong security and throughput advantages enable Movement not only to meet current technical demands but also to address the continuously growing challenges of the future blockchain industry.

The innovative ecosystem of Movement Network will further drive market development through the following key areas:

  • Enterprise-level application scenarios: As companies gradually recognize blockchain technology, Movement's modular solutions provide flexible and secure infrastructure for enterprises, especially supporting independently deployed Rollups, allowing enterprises to enjoy the advantages of blockchain technology while maintaining system sovereignty.

  • DeFi and NFT markets: The high security and efficient execution of the Move language make Movement an important infrastructure in markets such as DeFi and NFTs. Particularly in scenarios involving high-frequency trading and complex smart contract applications, Movement demonstrates strong advantages.

  • Cross-chain interoperability: Movement can not only be compatible with Ethereum, Aptos, and Sui, but also provide cross-chain interoperability between other public chains. This offers a broader market opportunity for various decentralized applications.

(The above content is an excerpt and reprint authorized by the partner MarsBit, original link)

Statement: The article represents the author's personal views and opinions and does not represent the views and positions of Block. All content and opinions are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. Investors should make their own decisions and trades, and the author and Block will not bear any responsibility for direct or indirect losses resulting from investor transactions.

"Super project Movement mainnet is about to launch, a comprehensive analysis of token economics" was first published on (Block).