Hack VC Co-Founder: Movement Will Build a More Secure Web3 Infrastructure
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Hack VC Co-Founder: Movement Will Build a More Secure Web3 Infrastructure
Movement combines critical security features with enhanced performance and user experience, delivering the complete vision to realize Web3's transformation.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Ed Roman
Translation: TechFlow
Taking a New Step Forward
Today marks a significant milestone for our portfolio company @movementlabsxyz, as they officially launch their mainnet beta and native token. At Hack VC, we co-led their Series A funding round. This article outlines our investment thesis behind Movement.
The Problem
Since the early days of Web3, smart contract vulnerabilities have been a persistent and unresolved issue. In 2022 alone, over $3 billion was lost due to smart contract exploits.
Solving smart contract security is key to bringing Web3 and DeFi into the mainstream. In traditional finance, systems operate behind firewalls with private codebases, making major security incidents rare. For example, when you use Stripe for payments, wire transfers, or Venmo for money transfers, you don't worry about whether the underlying code can be attacked.
In contrast, in today's Web3 environment, users must constantly worry about code security. Web3 runs on open networks with publicly accessible code—essentially handing hackers a "treasure map" that clearly shows both the location and size of the treasure.
One root cause lies in the programming languages themselves. Ethereum dApps are typically written in Solidity, which lacks type safety, memory safety, and formal verification—making it easy for developers to introduce bugs. These flaws enable frequent attacks; for instance, reentrancy attacks were a primary reason for the $3 billion in losses mentioned earlier.
Background: The Move Programming Language
The Move programming language offers a fresh approach to solving smart contract security issues. Compared to existing mainstream tools, Move provides strong typing (reducing developer errors) and formal verification (lowering vulnerability risks), enabling developers to more easily detect and fix problems.
Sui and Aptos were among the first projects to adopt Move in the Web3 space. They aim to challenge Ethereum and earlier blockchains such as Avalanche, Hashgraph, and Polkadot. Both Sui and Aptos built distinct versions of virtual machines based on Move.
Movement’s Vision
Movement Labs is building a modular blockchain network based on the Move programming language, aiming to enhance Web3's security, performance, and user experience. Their first product is a Move-based Ethereum L2 that allows dApps from the Ethereum ecosystem to leverage Move’s advantages while using Celestia for data availability.
Movement’s design delivers several key benefits:
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New dApps can be built directly on an Ethereum L2 using Move instead of Solidity, providing developers with a safer environment free from common Solidity vulnerabilities.
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Existing dApps running on Sui or Aptos can easily migrate to Ethereum, gaining access to its larger liquidity and user base.
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Cross-chain deployment of Move dApps expands their user reach while attracting more developers and applications to Sui and Aptos.
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Overall, this accelerates the growth of Move’s developer ecosystem, helping establish Move as a mainstream development language.
Additionally, Movement supports Solidity to maintain compatibility with existing codebases.
Movement’s Security Advantages
Movement offers the following security features:
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An integrated "bytecode verifier" checks transaction-level resource safety, type safety, and memory safety, ensuring each value has only one mutable reference at any time.
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The bytecode interpreter executes transactions only after all safety conditions are met.
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Users can set module and account permissions, ensuring smart contracts run only through intended methods and preventing unintended modifications.
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Type-safe and memory-safe design effectively prevents reentrancy attacks.
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Verification tools can analyze target call states and determine the effects of procedure calls.
Additional Advantages Beyond Security
Beyond security, Movement’s tech stack brings many other innovations:
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Movement developed Fractal, a tool that translates traditional Solidity code into the Move Virtual Machine (VM) environment—a process known as "transpilation." This allows existing Solidity dApps to run within Move environments while maintaining compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem. This innovation is particularly important compared to other Move environments like Aptos or Sui, as developers gain access to EVM liquidity while also benefiting from Move’s formal verification to reduce potential risks.
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Movement’s M1 sequencer is deeply integrated with its Ethereum L2, providing fast finality and sequencing, enabling reorg protection and high availability. M1 supports parallel processing, delivering performance improvements of up to 10–100x. This performance edge makes Movement ideal for high-performance use cases such as gaming and low-latency DeFi, while low transaction costs support fine-grained operations like rapid NFT minting.
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Movement enables Bitcoin bridging via Snowman, introducing additional liquidity into the ecosystem.
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Movement supports the IBC protocol, enabling interoperability with Cosmos networks and further expanding ecosystem connectivity.
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Movement employs a dual-staking model, providing economic incentives for decentralized sequencer operation and ensuring network stability and security.
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Atomic transactions (e.g., atomic swaps) are supported between Rollups within the Movement ecosystem, enhancing transaction flexibility and efficiency.
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Movement provides Typescript support, allowing Web2 developers to easily transition into Web3 development. This lowers the learning barrier and attracts more developers to the Move ecosystem.
Current Progress
Movement has achieved notable milestones since launch:
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Its tech stack has attracted over 200 teams building on it.
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More than five Move-based tech stack networks have formed, including Lumio, Up Network, Lync, Nexio, and @ionet (@ionet is also another Hack VC portfolio company).
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Over seven teams natively building on Movement have completed fundraising.
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Over $150 million in total value locked (TVL) committed.
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Over 1.2 million Galxe followers (ranked #20 globally).
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Over 1 million active addresses.
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52 regional Movement Twitter and Telegram communities active.
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Movement meetups held across five continents.
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Over 30 million transactions processed within the second week of testnet.
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Movement has raised over $30 million to ensure long-term financial stability.
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Graduates from Movement’s self-run accelerator program “Move Collective” have collectively raised over $10 million.
Future Direction
Movement aims to expand its technological ecosystem across a broader range of blockchains. Its goal is to create an execution environment where the Move programming language can run on any blockchain, regardless of the Rollup framework or data availability (DA) layer. This is enabled by Movement’s fully decentralized shared sequencer (M1), which allows different blockchains to interoperate through a unified settlement layer.
With this vision, developers can build dedicated dApp chains tailored to specific needs, while blockchains like Avalanche, Polkadot, and Hashgraph can leverage the advantages of the Move programming language. Ultimately, this will provide Move-based dApp developers with a larger user base and higher total value locked (TVL), further accelerating the evolution of Web3.
Conclusion
At Hack VC, we believe security is fundamental to scaling Web3 and achieving mass adoption. Movement presents a comprehensive vision that we believe can significantly reduce—and potentially eliminate—smart contract vulnerabilities. While this journey begins with the Move programming language, Movement’s roadmap includes integrating additional security innovations, ultimately delivering a robust and holistic solution.
Movement combines critical security features with enhanced performance and user experience—we view this as the complete vision needed to drive transformative change in Web3. We are honored to have co-led Movement’s Series A round and congratulate the team on the successful launch of their token. We look forward to continuing this journey together.
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Disclosure Statement
The information contained in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, nor should it be relied upon in evaluating any investment decision. For advice regarding accounting, legal, tax, business, investment, or other matters, please consult your professional advisors. The content reflects the author’s current views and does not represent the opinions of Hack VC or its affiliates. Some information comes from public sources or third parties and may not be updated to the latest status as of the publication date. Hack VC assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such information and has no obligation to update or notify.
Past performance is not indicative of future results. Forward-looking statements in this article are based on the author’s experience and assumptions and are not guarantees of future performance, subject to unpredictable risks and uncertainties.
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