Movement Labs Acquires $38M to Integrate Facebook's Move Virtual Machine with Ethereum

Movement Labs, a blockchain startup established in 2022, has raised $38 million. The funding will support their ambitions to merge Facebook's Move Virtual Machine with Ethereum. 

Led by Polychain Capital, the funding round saw contributions from various VC firms, such as Hack VC, Placeholder, and Archetype. The backing from these firms underscores their strong confidence in Movement's potential. 

Ethereum has previously faced a host of security challenges. These include losses from smart contract exploits exceeding $5.4 billion between 2022 and 2023. With Facebook's Move Virtual Machine, the firm plans to address these vulnerabilities.

Rushi Manche, the startup's co-founder, explained their mission to propel blockchain innovation while streamlining the user experience. "The two biggest issues in blockchain infrastructure at the moment are poor user experience and smart contract exploits," said Manche. 

"My cofounder, Cooper Scanlon and I started building Movement to increase the velocity of innovation in crypto where the next Facebook can be built on-chain by developers who do not have the resources for large development teams and expensive auditors. Movement Labs addresses the shortcomings of Solidity and we are bringing it to market in a crypto-native way."

The startup is not stopping with this integration. They are also building Movement Zero-Knowledge Layer Two blockchain, which is set to handle over 30,000 transactions per second and maintain compatibility with Ethereum.

What's more, the firm announced plans for Move Stack, an execution layer framework that will work with existing rollup solutions from Optimism, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The goal? To enhance interoperability across different blockchain networks. 

As such, Movement Labs is set to positively influence the future of DeFi and blockchain infrastructure. Their efforts are bound to pave the way for more robust and secure blockchain apps.