Interviewees: Rushi Manche, Cooper Scanlon, Co-founders of Movement Labs
Interview and editing: Wendy, Luffy, Foresight News
Over the past two years, the competition between new L1 public chains and Ethereum L2 is undoubtedly the core arena of the entire crypto world. The L2 track has given birth to star representatives such as Optimism and Arbitrum, while the most eye-catching in the L1 public chain are Aptos and Sui, both of which use the Move language different from Solidity.
The Move language originated from Libra, a blockchain project of Meta (formerly known as Facebook). After Libra was terminated for regulatory reasons, Move ushered in a new life. This new development language is making waves in the crypto world, with a flourishing ecosystem and a host of high-potential stocks emerging. One of them, Movement Labs, has taken it upon themselves to promote Move and make "Move everywhere" a reality.
In April of this year, Movement secured a $38 million Series A financing led by Polychain Capital, ambitiously aiming to bring the Move language into the world of Ethereum's EVM. It's an imaginative new story, but what you may not know is that the two main characters behind this story, Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon (the co-founders of Movement), are just in their early twenties. Foresight News recently had a chat with these two young founders, where they shared their entrepreneurial journey, financing, project vision, and current plans.
1. As alumni of Vanderbilt University, you two are 3 years apart in age (Rushi Manche, 21, Cooper Scanlon, 24), yet you co-founded Movement Labs together. How did you meet, and when did you decide to start Movement Labs together?
Rushi: As you mentioned, we met during our university years. When I met Cooper, I was a freelancer using Solidity as a programming language. We wanted to build applications with something more secure than Solidity, and that's when the Move language caught our attention. We knew we needed to build on Ethereum because it's where users and real liquidity gather in the crypto world, and that's how Movement Labs was born.
2. Could you briefly describe the vision of Movement Labs? What are your current focus areas? What is the team structure of Movement Labs? Please give a brief introduction to the current product line of Movement Labs.
Cooper: The vision of Movement Labs is to create a more secure and unified Web3 ecosystem, breaking liquidity silos and achieving seamless interoperability between different blockchains. Our goal is to provide developers with access to high-performance networks, making the entire blockchain space operate as a cohesive, internet-like service.
Our current focus is on developing our flagship products, M1 and M2 networks, along with a suite of powerful tools to support them. We are about to launch the M2 mainnet, which will be the first Move language-based Layer 2 solution on Ethereum. It will support various Move implementations, including Sui Move and Aptos Move, as well as our embedded EVM interpreter, MEVM. This will enable developers from various ecosystems (including Sui, Aptos, and EVM-based platforms) to take advantage of our L2 solution.
One of the key features of M2 is its EVM parallelization. By leveraging the Move language and Sui's parallelization model, we can achieve high throughput and low latency for EVM transactions. This is achieved through object-centric storage and parallel execution of transactions.
Our EVM parallelization approach involves converting EVM bytecode into Move bytecode and then executing it in parallel. This conversion process preserves the semantics of the original EVM code while allowing it to take advantage of the parallelization benefits provided by the Move language and Sui execution model.
To facilitate the development and adoption of our network, we are also developing Movement SDK, Movement CLI, Fractal, and Hyperlane messaging infrastructure. These tools will provide developers with the necessary resources to easily build and deploy applications on our platform.
We have a team consisting of engineers, researchers, and business developers who are working together to turn our vision into reality.
3. Movement is an Ethereum Layer 2 based on the Move language. Some may find this story not "sexy" enough or label it as "micro-innovation." Moreover, both of you are very young, only 21 and 24 years old, respectively. Some people, including potential investors, may ask, "Why you?" How would you respond to such skepticism?
Rushi: The Move language emphasizes ownership and security, which are the cornerstones of safety. Assets in Move are represented as resources, and due to Move's powerful ownership model and clear resource handling capabilities, it can simplify the development of secure smart contracts. This includes everyday blockchain functions such as asset ownership transfer, minting, and burning, all of which form the basis of DApp activities.
As for why people should trust Movement Labs, it all goes back to our years of experience in building Web3 applications and developing blockchain execution environments. For example, I have been working as a smart contract engineer in the Ethereum DeFi space for many years and have closely collaborated with multiple protocols in the Cosmos ecosystem. Additionally, Cooper's financial and technical expertise, along with insights into economic systems, have helped guide Movement Labs in the right strategic and cultural direction.
4. In the recent financing, how did you convince Polychain to lead the investment? What was the decisive moment? Any interesting stories to share?
Rushi: Polychain (like other investors) recognized the enormous potential of the products built by Movement Labs. They share our vision of creating a more secure and interoperable blockchain ecosystem supported by Move.
They understand our technical prowess and team strength. We demonstrated how the M1 and M2 networks are built on Move and deeply integrated with Ethereum, achieving new levels of security, scalability, and cross-chain liquidity. We are delighted that Polychain chose to support us.
5. You have emphasized the security of the Move language multiple times. In what aspects does this security primarily manifest? What is the biggest advantage of Move compared to the Solidity language? For example, how does it address reentrancy attack issues?
Rushi: Although the use cases of Move and Solidity are somewhat different, they can coexist and even complement each other. The focus of Move is on security and performance. This makes it more suitable for building complex smart contracts designed for high-performance applications. Meanwhile, Solidity already has a vast ecosystem and developer community behind it and will continue to exist. As for reentrancy attack issues, Move eliminates the typical path of reentrancy attacks by ensuring that resource access is unique.
6. What challenges have you encountered in the process of integrating Move with Ethereum? Are there any potential challenges remaining?
Cooper: Integrating Move and Ethereum seamlessly into one network is very complex. From a technical perspective, ensuring secure cross-chain messaging, data availability, and unified liquidity requires meticulous engineering design. We have to pioneer new approaches to address these challenges.
In the future, our focus will be on creating an intuitive developer experience to drive the adoption of our Move-supported tools and networks. Fortunately, we have an excellent team that has proven capable of handling complexity and delivering outstanding products. Our experience in building for the Move and EVM ecosystems gives us an advantage in coordinating the two. Additionally, our investors provide resources and strategic advice to help us scale.
7. How do you plan to increase the adoption of the Move language (which may be beyond the ability of a single project)? What specific strategies do you have? What is the biggest challenge in this regard?
Cooper: The resource-oriented programming model and built-in security features of Move make it more attractive for building truly high-performance blockchain applications. Our goal is to introduce it to other networks and environments through widespread adoption and interoperable developer tools, thus achieving "Move everywhere." By providing open-source frameworks and protocols, we believe we can accelerate the adoption of Move and unleash its full potential for developers.
8. At the Layer 2 level, which projects will Movement focus on supporting? The Move community is quite active in China, what are your views on the Asian market? Apart from Asia, where are the main concentrations of Move developers? How do you incentivize more developers to learn Move?
Cooper: We already have a growing ecosystem of projects based on Movement, including oracles, automated market makers, wallets, and more. We can provide all the services needed for a functioning Web3 world.
Additionally, as part of our global strategy, we place great importance on the Asia-Pacific region. This is because we know that the Move developer community there has a wealth of talent and enormous potential, and it is the home of many of the earliest builders and believers in Move. We support all Asian Move developers and are excited to provide them with the resources, education, and opportunities they need to excel in our ecosystem.
That being said, we believe the best way to incentivize developers in any region is to build a developer-centric platform, which naturally attracts talent to utilize the capabilities provided by Move. We are working hard to promote through social and community channels such as X and Discord, letting developers from all networks know that there is now a set of tools designed specifically for them.
9. Like Movement, Aptos and Sui are also based on the Move language, but they have chosen Layer 1 projects, while you have chosen Ethereum Layer 2. How do you currently view the development prospects of these different paths?
Cooper: Ethereum is where the vast majority of blockchain developers share ideas, and it has the most powerful tools, liquidity, and network effects, making it the cultural center of Web3. By building a Move-driven Layer 2 framework on top of Ethereum, we can leverage the rich resources of the Ethereum ecosystem while enhancing the ecosystem with Move's advanced security, scalability, and performance.
This allows us to provide developers with the best of both worlds: the security and rich functionality of Move, as well as seamless access to Ethereum's vibrant DApp ecosystem and early liquidity. We believe this is the key to promoting the adoption of Move and the success of the next generation of DApps.
10. Like Aptos and Sui, the birth of Movement Labs also stemmed from Facebook's blockchain vision. However, at that time, Facebook was facing significant regulatory pressure, leading to the eventual abandonment of the plan. Now, regulatory challenges still exist. We have seen from Coinbase to Uniswap, and now to Consensys, they have all been involved in lawsuits/disputes with different regulatory agencies. As entrepreneurs in the blockchain field, how do you view the current regulatory situation? How will this affect your decision-making on some major issues?
Rushi: We have been monitoring regulatory developments in multiple jurisdictions and we hope to act cautiously and comply with legal frameworks. That being said, this field is still evolving and changing. We hope to do our best to address any developments and changes in the regulatory space while maintaining compliance, and we will address new issues as they arise.
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