Binance Labs New Investment: What is Movement Labs?

Binance Labs, the venture arm of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has announced a strategic investment in Movement Labs. 

This San Francisco-based blockchain development team has been making waves in the industry, particularly after its successful $38 million Series A funding round. 

Aiming to create a faster, more secure Layer 2 network on Ethereum, Movement Labs was founded in 2022 by Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, early builders in the Move ecosystem. 

Let's delve deeper into what exactly Movement Labs is…

What is Movement Labs?

Movement Labs is on a mission to pioneer 'Move Everywhere.' But what does that mean exactly? 

At its core, Movement Labs is building an ecosystem of Modular Move-based blockchains. The team behind Movement Labs, consisting of visionary leaders Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, aims to provide developers with the tools and infrastructure needed to deploy Move-based applications across various blockchain ecosystems.

Movement Labs is empowering developers by providing them with a suite of open-source tooling, frameworks, and protocols designed to facilitate the adoption of the Move programming language. 

Move, a safe and secure programming language for Web3, emphasizes scarcity and access control. Assets in Move are represented by or stored within a resource, ensuring robust access controls and enhancing security in blockchain applications.

The Modular Framework of Movement

One of the key highlights of Movement Labs is its modular framework, which enables the building and deployment of Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment. 

This modular approach simplifies the development process and allows for greater flexibility and customization in blockchain deployments.

Introducing M1 and M2

Movement Labs has already made progress with its releases. M1, the team's first offering, reimagines Layer 1 as a Vertically Composable and Horizontally Scalable Framework. It is Solidity-compatible and connects EVM and Move liquidity, providing builders with the ability to customize modular and interoperable app-chains with ease.

Building on the success of M1, Movement Labs is gearing up to launch M2, the first Move Virtual Machine Layer 2 for Ethereum. M2 integrates Celestia for Data Availability, Snowman Consensus for Shared Sequencing, and the Move Virtual Machine for execution. This integration enables high-performance, consumer-focused applications with minimal resource expenditure, further solidifying Movement Labs' position as an industry leader.

Strategic Focus on Asia-Pacific and Investor Backing

Recognizing the potential and talent within the Move development community in the Asia-Pacific region, Movement Labs is placing a strong emphasis on this area.

The company is committed to supporting Asian Move developers, providing them with resources, education, and opportunities to contribute significantly to the growth of the Move ecosystem.

Movement Labs' recent funding round saw participation from leading venture capital firms, including Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs. Now Binance Labs also joined the long list of its backers.