Bringing MOVE to the EVM
Welcome to the alpha please newsletter.
gm friends, today we are talking about Movement.
I’m sure you have heard a little bit about the MOVE programming language. It’s utilized by Sui and Aptos. Well, MOVE is coming to the EVM and I think it could be a big deal.
Cooper Scanlon is the co-founder of Movement Labs and I had the pleasure of chatting with him.
We go over what is Movement, we break down the tech (M1 & M2), why Move is a superior language for blockchain devs and I ask him about the token (because we like the tokens).
M2 (zk Move-based Ethereum rollup) will be launching on mainnet this year, so I really implore you to give this one a read. There are plenty of opportunities to get involved with their community, and they want to reward everyone that helps spread the movement.
I am a private investor in Movement and am therefore biased, but I really think MOVE being available to more devs can move this industry forward.
What is your crypto origin story? How did you end up here?
The idea of earning money from my money was very appealing because I was always struggling financially. I was interested in stocks, but I never had enough money to invest, rarely having more than $100 in my bank account on a good day.
When I went to college, and COVID happened, I had the chance to live off-campus and I had a bit of disposable income.
I had fun investing in lithium, but after that, I was looking for what's next. I spent a lot of time in degen forums, and that's how I came across Dogecoin. I tried it out, but it was too volatile for me, so I decided to get out, and of course, it skyrocketed after that. So I thought okay, maybe there is something here.
I was really interested in the technology underneath it all. At the time, I was still in college and decided to focus every paper, speech, and presentation on crypto. This forced me to learn about what was happening in the space and put myself in positions where I had to grow. I was also a founding member of my university's blockchain club and contributed to newsletters, did research, and wrote investing newsletters, sharing my take on the market.
I discovered a new language gaining traction called Move, which I really quickly fell in love with. I wanted to be on the cutting edge moving into web3, I didn't want to just be like a wheel in a machine that was feeding someone else. I don’t just want a seat at the table, I'll build my own damn table.
Web3 is one of the few places left where you can still achieve this, and I'm really excited to be doing that at Movement Labs. It's an honor to help others build their seat at the table, to democratize this language, and bring it to market in a Web3-native way. Doing so in a manner that allows this common tide to raise all ships for those who are believers in Movement, and for those who want to come together to build something bigger than ourselves.
So the goal is to make the Move language more accessible? Would you say this is what you’re doing at the highest level?
I think that's a great way to describe it, that we're integrating a next-generation smart contract language into existing blockchains in a way that we're not introducing a new layer one or layer two. You don't have to leave your ecosystem, bridge your assets, or download new wallets and infrastructure. We integrate directly. We're collaborative, not competitive. And secondly, this movement is a culmination of developers, builders, and degens coming together, united under this Move umbrella, with a belief that we can achieve bigger and better things, especially when we do them together.
Can you tell us a bit more about M1 and what you are trying to achieve?
The way I like to envision it, M1 is the “work core” of the Movement Network. It's what enables us to be the pinnacle of modularity. This is because M1 is a decentralized sequencer that extends Snowman consensus to any blockchain, any app chain, any network within our Movement framework.
So what's really cool about snowman consensus is that with traditional Byzantine consensus models, you need to poll a certain percentage of the validators in order to achieve consensus and finality. So this means that the more validators you have, the longer that process takes and so most Byzantine networks, they cap at 100 validators because even at that point, it starts to become a user experience problem, and especially going beyond there.
Snowman uses a gossip model, where the validators are essentially all talking to one another. This means you don't necessarily need to poll the same percentage of validators because they're all sharing information with each other. So, polling one validator can get you marks from multiple validators. Essentially, you have a consensus model that scales much more logarithmically and at a much lower rate of time as you add more validators.
Avalanche have over 1000 validators and are still achieving sub-second finality, which is incredibly fast. What's really exciting about M1 being able to extend this is that it allows for Move execution, Celestia data availability, and some other really cool features, along with some exciting partnerships that we'll be announcing soon.
With Snowman consensus, we get the fastest and most scalable consensus mechanism for processing. And then, of course, there's the settlement layer of your choice, like M2, which will be on Ethereum. We also expect to see other networks and blockchains integrating the Move virtual machine as well.
This pinnacle product brings together the best of all these different worlds in a way that aligns incentives with everyone where they are today, we’re kind of like Amazon, delivering this all to your front door.
Let’s dig into M2 next. How does it fit into your ecosystem?
You can think of M2 as our mainnet. This is the place where applications are going to be deploying, meaning it's going to be our zero-knowledge Move-based Ethereum rollup.
M1 is supporting infrastructure for M2 that enables M2 to have the best consensus mechanism, the fastest finality, and the scalability, in order to additionally decentralize our validator set. So, we really can be a movement in which the participants are able to have as much of a role in the network as possible.
You mentioned you will be interoperable with Cosmos. Could you talk a little more about the extent of your interoperability?
We've always admired Cosmos as a network for its ethos of decentralization. It really aligns with the ethos of Movement to support IBC and the Cosmos ecosystem. Highlighting this is our partnership with Union Movement. As a Move stack, we'll have full access and compatibility with IBC. Introducing a new term here, this Move stack is essentially how you develop on Movement. It includes all your toolkits, compatibility, connectors, and resources available to you as a builder. With IBC integrated, this means we can add a whole lot more tools to this Move stack, which any builder on the Movement network can then leverage.
This partnership with Union is really awesome as well, because it also gives native USDC access for IBC enabled apps and blockchains. So through this collaboration, not only are folks getting access to IBC, they can also get access to USDC.
With any other integrations that happen with our Move stack and with the Union, our goal is to make this as accessible as possible for apps. What we're seeing now is these cutting-edge, net-new Move-based applications being able to plug in with existing infrastructure that has been developed and battle-tested. This not only allows these applications to scale but also enables collaboration and interaction with many new communities and builders as well.
What we want to see is people from different networks, with different backgrounds, building different things, all coming together to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. So, in that sense, not just being the pinnacle of modularity with regard to the stack—our execution, data availability, consensus, and settlement layers—but additionally, looking at modular applications, modular options, and really pushing the envelope of what is possible here. We envision that when one connection happens, it should send ripples of benefit throughout the entire ecosystem. This is something made possible only through the Move stack, and something we're attempting to reach the pinnacle of as well, starting with our Movement network, M1 and M2.
Could you provide a little more detail on the Move language for people who aren’t developers? What sets it apart from other languages like Rust or Solidity, and how will users benefit from it being implemented?
I want to highlight three pieces here. One is the benefits of Move. Two is the opportunity in being a part of something new. And the third piece is Movement specifically, and the way we're incubating Move and bringing it to market in a decentralized, democratized, and Web3-native way.
So for the benefits of Move, it's pretty simple: it's faster, it's more secure, and it's more scalable. With Move, you not only have native parallel processing, which is able to hit 140,000 TPS, but you also have enhanced security features that prevent reentrancy attacks and other common attack vectors that we often see in languages like Solidity.
There is also the benefit of Move being developed by Meta. They had the opportunity to deeply analyze Solidity and Rust, and invest countless millions of dollars and hours of their best engineering talent to create a language that's faster, safer, easier to learn, more intuitive to develop with, and ultimately more scalable than anything that's been built before.
One thing that I like to highlight with regard to Move security is the concept of modules. In Move, your code, including different functions and activities, is organized into what are called modules. Within these modules, you define who has access to them, as well as where assets can flow to and from. Essentially, you're creating hard-coded pipelines with guardrails set in place regarding who has access and where things can go.
For example, if you have a vault, an unknown external contract or wallet would not have permission to access the vault. Even if they were able to gain access to a trusted wallet, they wouldn't be able to withdraw to some third-party address; they'd only be able to move funds within the context of the vault module. This provides significantly more security benefits, especially in a landscape where we see a hack nearly every other week.
So for us, being able to plug the Move language into existing chains, and not having the same cold start problem but being collaborative instead, is kind of a no-brainer. Why would you not use this environment if you care about your assets being safe?
Lastly, we're not looking to have our own blockchain or infrastructure. We aim to utilize what people are already using. This is why we've developed tools like Fractal as part of our Move stack, so existing Solidity applications can upgrade their codebase seamlessly without having to leave their network or invest countless engineering hours in learning Move. We want to make this transition as seamless as possible because we believe Move should be everywhere.
So how easy will it be to upgrade a Solidity contract to Move?
It's very simple. You plug in your Solidity code, and out comes Move code. We've done a lot of mapping of different functions and created levels of standardization to make the process more seamless. For edge cases, we're always improving. As applications integrate with Movement, we also provide a bespoke, dedicated Solutions Engineer to that team to smooth out any hiccups that appear, because, of course, this is a work in progress and something quite revolutionary. We’ve seen some great teams go through this process, such as Gogo Pool and Benqi - the two biggest lending protocols on Avalanche.
What are you doing to get new projects to build on M2? Have you set up any sort of pipeline for new apps?
We're seeing a lot of excitement from Move builders and being able to extend their accessibility and provide stronger access to the metrics they need to grow and thrive as protocols. Additionally, we offer significant grants for teams building on us, both for applications and for those who want to create frameworks or public goods. We'll also be assisting teams on the TVL front. We have a lot of exciting announcements coming, including special programs where teams can apply for guaranteed TVL on day one of mainnet, even before any token launch, if a token were to come at some point. So, really, our focus is on ensuring that builders have a sizeable piece of the network and providing them with everything they need. We're here to support them in every way, whether that's with fundraising, community growth, or understanding their TVL sources.
What would a Movement token look like in terms of governance and ownership?
What's really cool about the opportunity of the Movement Network token is that, firstly, it's like a layer one token. So you can think of it as akin to an Ether or a Sol, where it's used for gas, as a medium of exchange, and as an entry point into the network. What sets it apart from other tokens is its scalability. As we support more blockchains and ecosystems, entirely new sets of projects and communities will be able to utilize this token, which is exciting from a scalability perspective.
Additionally, if the Ethereum blockchain is having a bad day, the ETH token is likely having a bad day too, and the same goes for any traditional network or layer one token. But our vision of having an ecosystem that's everywhere offers a lot more stability by being hedged across multiple ecosystems and networks. Going back to the carbon cycle or phosphorus cycle analogy, this token is like the carbon, the phosphorus—it denominates the flow of value within the ecosystem. If there were to be a token, my philosophy is that it should flow from the applications, from the participants and communities, from the artists—everyone participating in the network.
Could you talk a bit about how your validators will work?
Details about staking requirements and what exactly that looks like will come a bit later, closer to our mainnet launch. What I can say, though, is that we've noticed it's really difficult to become a validator on many chains, not only in terms of needing hardware but often requiring significant financial investment—$10,000, $100,000, or even millions of dollars. That's not what we're aiming for. We want our network to be significantly more accessible, not just in terms of participation but in becoming a core participant, like being a validator of the network. We're working on some pretty innovative and fun ways to make validation more accessible to folks. Unfortunately, that's all I can share for now.
Are there any projects building in the Movement ecosystem that you think people should check out?
Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of really cool teams building on top of the Movement network. In particular, we have teams that are developing cutting-edge solutions with the Move language, solutions that might not be feasible with other languages or on chains with lower performance.
One team that we're really excited about is Xebra. They're building a perpetuals protocol, powered by Move, launching on top of Movement. Interest Protocol is building a move based borrow/lend platform. There's also a really cool wallet called Desig that's making it accessible for onboarding and developing some really cool products. We also have Razor DAO which is another wallet, but what is awesome about this is that it’s a genesis project. This will be the first network they are launching on. Another wallet to check out is Nightly.
Another project that is launching is called Guilder. They’re like a Tinder for games. With Move, you have these things called dynamic NFTs, which allow you to swap out attributes of the NFT without needing to burn and mint a new one. This mechanism isn't tied to a smart contract but is natively part of the NFT itself. Guilders are making some social applications and are particularly leveraging Move's dynamic NFTs.
We’re currently preparing for testnet, so keep an eye on the Movement Network page for any official information regarding the testnet, any incentives or rewards pertaining to the testnet, as well as any other information surrounding the network and the things we're doing here.
Looking out one year from now, what do you want to have achieved with Movement?
I would love to see a flourishing ecosystem of developers and builders of the Move language coming together, starting to build products that intersect with one another. I would also love for this community to be even larger and more cohesive. We're always rolling out different roles within our Discord, from scholars to ambassadors, Pathfinders, and all sorts of different ways to get involved. Here's hoping to have even more opportunities for each of those different roles and categories of participants, as well as figuring out even more ways for more people to get involved and grow this community.
Resources
Movement community programme - anyone can get involved here.
And that’s your alpha.
Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Crypto currencies are very risky assets and you can lose all of your money. Do your own research
That part about validation nodes got me excited.
Insane bro