Are You Tired of the Current L1/L2 Narrative?

According to L2BEAT data, as of July 10th, there are already 61 Ethereum L2s in the entire crypto market, with another 79 in the queue to go live. However, most L2 solutions tend to be similar, lacking innovation. The traditional EVM model frequently suffers from hacking incidents, with new chains gradually becoming a haven for hackers.

Is there an L2 that can balance speed and security?

Movement steps up, aiming to introduce the Move language into the EVM ecosystem, thereby addressing the long-standing security issues of the EVM ecosystem.

In April 2024, Movement Labs announced the completion of a $38 million Series A funding round, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hack VC, Placeholder, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs. In May, Binance Labs revealed that it had made a strategic investment in Movement.

Among the many Ethereum L2s, what sets Movement apart?

Introducing Move into the EVM Ecosystem

Movement represents a significant shift by integrating the Move language into the EVM ecosystem.

Why Move?

A security professional within the Move ecosystem once told me that the technical potential of MOVE is vastly underestimated, especially in the security realm. Developed by Facebook (now META) as a new smart contract language, Move was designed from its inception specifically for crypto assets. Compared to commonly used programming languages in the Ethereum ecosystem like Solidity, Move emphasizes “security” and “high performance” in its logical design.

Without needing to rely on L2 solutions, MOVE employs an optimization technique called “modular packing” to reduce blockchain transaction storage space and computation costs. Modular packing reduces storage and indexing costs by bundling multiple smart contracts into a single module and increases execution speed by reducing the steps needed to execute bytecode. This optimization allows Move-based blockchains to achieve transaction per second (TPS) rates that often exceed tens of thousands and can even scale to the 100,000 level.

Addressing Security Concerns

Security issues are a significant challenge currently plaguing the entire Ethereum ecosystem. In 2023, on-chain hacker attacks resulted in losses exceeding $7 billion, largely due to inherent vulnerabilities in Solidity. For example, during dynamic calls, malicious users can exploit Solidity to execute malicious contracts by calling project functions, leading to successful attacks. In contrast, the Move language uses static calls, where Program A’s call to Program B is determined before runtime and remains unchanged during operation, addressing dynamic call issues and enhancing network stability.

Move’s design prioritizes security, aiming to prevent many issues that plague Web 3.0 users, including re-entrancy vulnerabilities, poison tokens, and spoofed token approvals. This was the founding principle of Movement Labs in 2022: to address common smart contract vulnerabilities in the Ethereum ecosystem while introducing a novel execution environment designed for over 30,000 TPS.

Beyond Technical Advantages

However, in the real crypto market, mere technical advantages are not enough to change the landscape. Most high-performance public chains dubbed “Ethereum killers” have gradually faded into obscurity. An L1 blockchain needs more than security and performance; it must build an ecosystem—users, developers, applications, assets, and liquidity—without which it risks becoming a beautifully decorated ghost town.

This is where the Ethereum ecosystem has a strong advantage and a significant barrier.

Movement’s Unique Proposition

Is there a way to combine the security and performance of the MOVE language with Ethereum’s extensive user base and liquidity?

This is where Movement comes in. By introducing the MOVE language to the EVM ecosystem, Movement aims to link the security and high-performance advantages of Move with the liquidity and large user base of the EVM system, creating a synergy of strengths.

For example, with the Movement SDK, developers can automatically convert Solidity scripts into opcodes understandable by Move without writing Move code. This enables launching on M2 while maintaining interoperability with Ethereum and other EVM networks.

Movement has built a bridge connecting MOVE and EVM, and in the middle of this bridge, a city has been constructed where EVM users and capital converge, creating a safer and more efficient blockchain city-state.

Two Flagship Products: M1 and M2

According to official documentation, Movement Labs is currently developing two blockchain architectures: M1 and M2.

M1 is a community-centric blockchain network offering high TPS, instant finality, and modular customization through the Move language. Initially announced as a Move-EVM blockchain, M1 is designed to evolve into a decentralized sequencer. This sequencer will support M2 and other rollups built using the Move Stack.

In M1’s economic model, all transaction fees are allocated to the token staking validator network, creating a flywheel effect that incentivizes more validators to join the network for better returns. Overall, M1 functions as a “shared sequencer” and “consensus layer” component within the Movement ecosystem and any other blockchain network.

M2 is the primary mainnet within the Movement ecosystem. It is an Ethereum L2 based on M1 and ZK-Rollup, combining the performance and security advantages of the Move language with EVM integration, allowing Ethereum-compatible DApps to run on M2.

• Consensus Layer: M2 uses the shared ordering Snowman consensus from M1.
• Data Availability: M2 integrates with Celestia for data availability.
• Execution Layer: M2 employs MoveVM for its execution layer.

A typical on-chain transaction path on M2 involves the following steps:

1. Transactions on M2 are ordered by the M1 sequencer network.
2. The transaction data is packaged and sent back to Ethereum.
3. Validity proofs are generated by the zk-provers network in the Prover Marketplace, ensuring finality.
4. The ZK proof results are published on the Ethereum mainnet.
5. Detailed transaction data is posted to Celestia for data state synchronization between the two networks.

Through Blobstream technology, Celestia’s modular data availability layer can also be transmitted to Ethereum, ensuring comprehensive data consistency.

One of M2’s critical features is its EVM parallelization capability. By converting EVM bytecode to Move bytecode and executing it in parallel, M2 achieves high throughput and low latency for EVM transactions.

To summarize:

• M1 handles the consensus layer and transaction ordering.
• M2 manages the conversion between Solidity and Move, as well as transaction execution.
• Celestia/Ethereum is responsible for the final data availability and state security.

Movement SDK: The MOVE-EVM Bridge

The key tool behind M2, enabling the integration of Move into the EVM, is the Movement SDK. This modular framework combines the security and resource management features of MoveVM with the flexibility and adaptability of Solidity. It allows developers to build and deploy Move-based infrastructure and applications in any distributed environment.

Core Components of Movement SDK

1. MoveVM: The core execution engine of the Movement SDK, providing a resource-oriented and strictly controlled environment for running smart contracts. Despite both being based on the MOVE language, Sui Move and Aptos Move are separate blockchain systems with distinct VMs and toolkits, and their differences are growing with new features, almost like different programming languages. Movement’s modular MoveVM is designed to be fully compatible with both the EVM and other Move ecosystems. It currently supports deploying Aptos and EVM code and will soon support the Sui ecosystem. This allows developers to quickly deploy decentralized applications (DApps) from ecosystems like Aptos, Sui, and Ethereum onto new platforms without learning a new programming language.
2. Fractal: A compiler that enables developers to seamlessly deploy existing Solidity smart contracts on MoveVM. This bridging functionality provides Solidity developers with a more secure and efficient execution environment while preserving the original logic and functionality of Solidity contracts.
3. Custom Adaptors: The final core component of the Movement SDK, these are designed to provide seamless integration with sequencer networks and Data Availability (DA) services, ensuring secure connections with various blockchain networks and services.

In essence, the Movement SDK bridges the gap between the Move and Ethereum ecosystems, facilitating multi-chain deployment of decentralized applications and leveraging the strengths of both MoveVM and Solidity.

Team and Funding

The founders of Movement Labs are Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, aged 21 and 24 respectively. Both attended Vanderbilt University.

• Rushi Manche started programming at 14, initially working on database and system security engineering. He founded an AI-driven exam tutoring platform called Ensemble, providing free test prep materials to high school students. Later, he transitioned to the cryptocurrency field as a Solidity developer. During college, he freelanced and collaborated with several Cosmos protocols, developing a decentralized file storage system within Cosmos. In 2022, Rushi joined Aptos as a software engineer, contributing to Move language smart contract development and the core DEX in the ecosystem, realizing the vast potential of the Move language.
• Cooper Scanlon built and audited the first yield aggregator using the Move language before co-founding Movement Labs. In November 2022, Rushi and Cooper, both Vanderbilt alumni, decided to drop out of college to establish Movement Labs.

In September 2023, Movement Labs announced a $3.4 million Pre-Seed funding round led by Varys Capital, dao5, Blizzard The Avalanche Fund, Borderless Capital, and its cross-chain fund focusing on the Wormhole ecosystem. Other investors included Colony, Interop Ventures, Elixir Capital, BENQI, George Lampeth from dao5, Calvin Liu from Eigenlayer, Smokey The Bera from Berachain, Anurag Arjun from Avail, CoinFlipCanada from GMX, and a co-founder of Ankr.

This impressive list of investors, many from the Avalanche ecosystem, indicates strong support from Avalanche during Movement Labs’ early stages. Their first flagship product, M1, is built on the Avalanche Subnet technology stack.

In April 2024, Movement Labs completed a $38 million Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao 5, and Aptos Labs.

In May 2024, Binance Labs announced an investment in Movement Labs, though the specific amount was not disclosed.

Summarize

Overall, Movement Labs has garnered significant attention in the otherwise monotonous Ethereum L2 landscape due to its unique innovations and strong investor lineup. However, as a nascent L2 project, Movement Labs’ ecosystem needs further development, including comprehensive development tools, detailed documentation, and robust developer support systems. Like a great city that needs solid infrastructure and equitable opportunities to thrive, Movement Labs must foster an environment that attracts more people and capital to build a vibrant crypto-commercial city.

statement:

1. This article was reposted from [tech flow], originally titled “Movement: Bringing Move to EVM, Reshaping Ethereum Ecosystem Security,” and authored by Shen Chao TechFlow. For any objections regarding the repost, please contact the Gate Learn Team, who will promptly handle the matter according to the relevant procedures._

2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute investment advice.

3. Translations of this article into other languages by the Gate Learn team should not be copied, disseminated, or plagiarized without mentioning Gate.io._