Movement reshapes the ecosystem: from market crisis to ecological alliance reversal

After experiencing the market maker turmoil at the end of 2024, the Movement blockchain team underwent a major restructuring. The former CEO candidate resigned, and a new company, Move Industries, was established. The current CEO, Torab Torabi, has taken on the responsibility of revitalizing the ecosystem and rebuilding trust. Recently, this Movement co-founder gave an in-depth interview about team transformation, technological breakthroughs, and ecosystem strategy.

From Crisis to Restructuring: Movement’s Historical Turning Point

At the end of 2024, the MOVE token on Movement experienced a massive sell-off on its launch day, when partner institutions dumped 66 million tokens in one day, creating approximately $38 million in selling pressure. The token’s market cap plummeted from $3 billion to below $500 million. Subsequently, the disclosed contract terms were described by internal lawyers as “the worst terms we’ve seen,” involving complex interests among multiple parties.

Faced with this crisis, the Movement team made a key decision—to establish an independently operated Move Industries, completely severing previous improper relationships. Torab Torabi officially assumed the role of CEO of the new company. In the interview, he revealed: “Our top priority is to admit mistakes, identify the root causes, and establish mechanisms to prevent recurrence. After removing that problematic market maker, we now only cooperate with top-tier institutions recognized by exchanges.”

Technological Breakthrough: Performance Upgrades Reshape Competitiveness

Torab emphasized, “Blockchain is ultimately a technological product; users care about three points: speed, cost, and user experience.”

After taking over, Move Industries’ first major move was to initiate the Monza upgrade. The new CTO, Yang Liang (former Aptos Move lead, involved in the original design of the Move language), led this technological innovation. The results were remarkable:

Performance metrics doubled — transaction latency dropped from 12 seconds to 1 second, reaching industry-leading levels.

Ecosystem activity surged — TVL increased by 61% quarter-over-quarter, DEX daily trading volume skyrocketed 10 times, and stablecoin lock-up volume grew 7 times.

Node democratization — from 1 public node to over 70, enabling developers to no longer be limited.

Application ecosystem matured — over 35,000 transactions per day, with more than 11,000 smart contracts deployed.

This upgrade marked the completion of Movement’s migration from L2 to L1. Torab explained: “Having an L1 identity gives us full control over the tech stack, no longer a patchwork of components. It provides us with true independence and governance capabilities. Meanwhile, the L1 architecture allows us to launch staking and mining mechanisms, enabling token holders to earn rewards, which provides self-sustaining operational capacity for the global ecosystem.”

Move Alliance: Reshaping Ecosystem Incentives

To fundamentally address the industry stubborn problem of “developer and chain interests misaligned,” Movement launched an innovative Move Alliance program.

“Traditional models have each chain issuing tokens, and each development team wanting to issue tokens too. The result? Everyone acts independently, competing for users and fees,” Torab pointed out the core issue.

The solution of Move Alliance disrupts convention: all participating development teams commit to using 50%-100% of their profits to buy back MOVE tokens. These tokens, once in the team’s treasury, can earn the same annualized yield as staking. Every quarter, all operations are publicly transparent on-chain, verifiable via dashboards.

“This essentially channels the entire ecosystem’s value creation into a single token. We will never issue a second token—any value created always returns to MOVE,” Torab emphasized that this is the ethical bottom line of Move Industries.

Currently, the buyback scale initiated by Movement is funded by a risk compensation from an exchange (about $38 million). The completed buybacks have reclaimed nearly 2% of the token supply. These reserves are stored on Ethereum and Movement chain, preparing for future strategic deployments.

Ecosystem Positioning: Service Provider, Not Competitor

When asked about the competitive relationship with mature Move ecosystems like Sui and Aptos, Torab provided a clear differentiation stance:

Different team genetics — “Most of Sui and Aptos’s core teams come from Libra/Diem projects. We are builders from the native crypto space. Coming from DeFi trenches, we better understand the real needs of builders.”

Token policy differences — “Never issuing multiple tokens is our core commitment. It’s not just a strategic choice but an ethical one. Once a second token is issued, the ecosystem’s focus and value are dispersed.”

Clear boundaries in competition — “We won’t compete with developers. For example, Deepbook in Sui ecosystem and Decibel in Aptos are essentially competing within the ecosystem for users and fees. We will never do such things.”

The recent ecosystem deployment of Move Industries confirms this commitment. In cooperation with the payment app KAST, Movement provides infrastructure support rather than competing. Together with Replit, they launched the Move Builder Kit, helping developers prioritize mobile. Torab pointed out: “60% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. Billions of people own phones but not laptops. Without a mobile strategy, you exclude most of the world’s population.”

Market Outlook: A New Era of Privacy and Compliance

In predicting the cryptocurrency market in 2026, Torab highlighted several key trends:

Regulation of stablecoins — “We will see strict legislation targeting USD stablecoins. The duopoly of USDC-USDT is unfavorable for emerging countries—if all countries adopt a ‘digital dollar,’ it’s effectively shorting their own currencies. The UK has already required reporting for stablecoins exceeding certain thresholds. This regulatory pressure will push people to seek alternatives.”

Return of privacy needs — “Increasing regulation will drive demand for privacy and security tools. The original spirit of the crypto movement is cyberpunk; I believe this spirit will become mainstream again.”

Mobile-first future — As a tech executive with extensive experience in Silicon Valley and Web2, Torab deeply understands the power of mobile internet. Movement is actively betting on this direction: reducing latency, simplifying development, empowering ecosystem centers, so that hundreds of millions of mobile users can truly access decentralized finance.

Torab’s final summary is straightforward: “I can’t predict the price of MOVE or Bitcoin. If I could, I’d be a trader, not a builder. But what I do see clearly is that this ecosystem is starting from restoring trust, and through technology and aligned incentives, moving toward truly serving ordinary people with financial infrastructure.”