Layer 1 blockchain

Movement ticker MOVE

No public-data lookups yet
5 reviewed developments
40 cited sources

Summary

Proof-of-stake BFT chain built on a Movement fork of the Aptos node software. The whitepaper describes a protocol based on Jolteon (a HotStuff variant): a stake-weighted rotating leader proposes each block, validators holding more than two-thirds of voting power certify it, and it commits once a short chain of certified blocks builds on it, tolerating fewer than one-third faulty. Block-STM executes transactions in parallel. On 27 September 2026 the on-chain validator set had four active validators with near-equal voting power, and the docs say running a validator node is not supported yet. Slashing is defined in the protocol but not active. Epochs last two hours; on-chain staking settings require at least 100,000 MOVE per validator and a 14-day lockup. 2 3 4 7 15 16 20 28

Design

System: Layer 1 blockchainMovement's current chain (M1, chain ID 126) runs its own proof-of-stake validators and BFT commit rule and settles to no other chain; Ethereum is linked only through a token bridge. It launched in December 2024 as an Ethereum-anchored network with one leader node, and its October 2025 MiCA white paper still called it a side chain run by Movement Labs. Move Industries announced the Layer 1 mainnet live on 22 December 2025, saying funds, contracts and activity carried over without user action, and on 29 December 2025 the foundation called the transition complete.
Settlement family: Its own design
Scarce resource: Stake (proof of stake)
State model: Accounts
Finality: Other
Who makes blocks: One leader per round, taken from a fixed per-epoch order weighted by stake (the whitepaper also mentions reputation). Four validators were active on 2026-09-27. Movement's liquid staking post says it delegates to the Foundation-operated validator; the operators of the other three were not disclosed in reviewed sources.
Fork choice: No open weight-based fork choice: a block is final once the commit rule is met, which requires certificates from validators holding more than two-thirds of voting power. Movement's own pages disagree on whether a two-chain or three-chain commit rule applies. With four validators, one faulty validator is tolerated, and two offline validators stop new blocks from committing.

Qualifications

System class · Contested. Classed here as a base-layer blockchain because anyone can transact and the protocol has stake-based validator entry, but only four validators produce blocks and the docs say running a validator node is not supported. A reviewer could reasonably class it as permissioned until validator entry opens.
Finality · Partial. Movement's docs say transactions are final once committed under BFT consensus, with sub-second confirmation claimed. Slashing is not active and only four validators vote, so a reverted commit would not automatically cost the signers stake; it is not classed as stake-backed economic finality.
Slashing · Not applicable. The whitepaper says slashing is defined in the protocol but not currently active on mainnet, so misbehaviour does not burn stake today.
Validator concentration · Applies. Read from the mainnet validator set on 2026-09-27: four active validators holding between about 101 million and 105 million MOVE of voting power each. Any two hold more than one-third, and all four list AWS us-east-1 load balancers as network addresses. Point-in-time reading, not a score.
Upgrade authority · Contested. The whitepaper describes token-holder voting, but the on-chain governance settings read on 2026-09-27 set a voting period of about 359 years with no proposer stake, and an administrative account holding a framework-version capability ran the December 2025 epoch change. Who controls that key was not disclosed.
Settlement family · Partial. Recorded as other: Movement's current chain (M1) settles on its own proof-of-stake validator set, running a Movement fork of the Aptos node software with a BFT commit rule; nothing settles to another chain. None of the named settlement families describes this.

Tradeoffs

This view follows one way of thinking about design priorities, often called the blockchain trilemma. The design-priorities lesson sets out the counter-view. Read the design-priorities lesson.

Emphasizes

Scalability

Gives up

Decentralization. Four validators produce every block, all four register network addresses on AWS load balancers in a single region (us-east-1), the public cannot yet run a validator, and upgrades appear to run through an administrative account rather than token-holder votes. Two validators going offline together would halt commits.Safety rests on no more than one of four validators misbehaving, with no active slashing to penalize double-signing. The single-region reading comes from on-chain validator configuration, not an operator disclosure, and can change.

Full node at home

Unknown 8 9 10 20Movement publishes storage figures but no CPU or memory minimums: roughly 50 to 100 GB for a pruned full node on one page, 'several hundred GB' on another, and about 700 GB for a full-history mainnet node. Production full nodes are told to match validator specifications that are still marked coming soon. Nodes run Movement's fork of the Aptos node software, usually in Docker, and can restore from hourly backups published by Movement Labs.

Throughput claims

Unclassified: 10,000 tx/s 2 21 22Unclassified; do not compare.A '10,000+' target on Movement's architecture page, restated as delivered in December 2025 launch announcements; no method, workload or measurement date is given.Not stated.A capacity statement with no published method, workload or window, so it cannot be treated as a benchmark or an observation. Ignores transaction propagation, state growth and decoy or spam load. Says nothing about observed mainnet usage, which this review did not measure. Not comparable with any other chain's headline figure.
Theoretical peak: 160,000 tx/s 6 24Theoretical peak; not comparable across chains or with observed load.MiCA white paper (notified 28 October 2025) and the March 2025 mainnet beta post, both describing the Block-STM execution engine as capable of this figure in theory.Not stated; the figure describes the parallel execution engine, not this network's validators.Movement itself labels the figure theoretical; it describes the execution engine, not network capacity. Ignores consensus rounds, propagation, storage commit and state growth. Ignores decoy or spam load and contended workloads. Theoretical peak; not comparable across chains or with observed load.

Headline figures are not comparable across chains. A theoretical peak is never a like-for-like number.

Scaling layers

MovementStreamChannel (streaming payment channel contract) · Payment channels, testnet 38 39
One-way escrow ported from Tempo's stream channel design: the payer deposits tokens and signs cumulative payment vouchers off-chain, and the payee settles vouchers on-chain and closes the channel, refunding the rest. Only a testnet deployment is published; no mainnet deployment, audit or channel network was verified. (as of Sep 27, 2026)

Capabilities

Capabilities of Movement: how each one is provided, or its research status
Capability	How it is provided	Notes and sources
Account abstraction	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Atomic swaps	Unknown	Not yet assessed under the current definitions; no hash-locked or time-locked swap mechanism for Movement was reviewed. NEAR Intents routes swaps into Movement through competing solvers, which is an intent service rather than a protocol-level atomic swap. 13
Authenticated data publication	Unknown	Not yet assessed under this row's current definition.
Light clients	Unknown	Not yet assessed under the current definitions; Movement's docs describe light nodes that sync only relevant account data, and the whitepaper says its state tree supports light-client proofs, but no released light client was found. 3 4
Native staking or delegation	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
On-chain governance	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Parallel execution	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Payment or state channels	Partial (layer not stated) Earlier definition	Move Industries publishes a one-way streaming payment channel contract with a testnet deployment, plus a machine-payments SDK that uses it. No mainnet deployment or channel network was verified. 38 39
Programmable spending	Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition	Every transaction runs Move code against resources stored under accounts and objects, so spend conditions live in Move modules. Movement follows the Aptos flavour of Move. 4 14 29
Protocol-verified messaging	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Reversible transfers or recovery	Unknown	Not yet assessed under this row's current definition.
Rollups	Unknown	No rollup settling to Movement was found. Movement itself was presented in 2025 as a network anchored to Ethereum; the current chain settles to no other chain. Absence was not exhaustively verified. 21 24
Shielded transfers	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Signed partial offers	Unknown	Not yet assessed under this row's current definition.

Reading these values

How this feature is provided: Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
Structured assessment pending: The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
Unknown: The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
Earlier definition: Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
Reading across rows: The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.

Definitions, schema version and review history

Ecosystem & custody

Ecosystem products for Movement
Product type	Status	Notes and sources
Automated market makers	Established in the ecosystemYuzu Finance	Yuzu documents a concentrated-liquidity market maker built on Movement, and Movement named it the network's primary exchange in May 2026 after a request-for-protocol process. Liquidity depth was not measured and other venues were not reviewed. 26 27 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Issuer-native stablecoins	ThinUSDCx (backed by USDC in Circle xReserve), USDC.e and USDT.e (bridged from Ethereum)	Neither Circle's USDC address list nor Tether's supported-protocol list includes Movement. USDCx is minted on Movement against USDC held in Circle's xReserve contract; Circle calls such tokens USDC-backed stablecoins, distinct from USDC itself. The .e tokens are bridged wrappers. 12 25 30 31 32 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Algorithmic stablecoins	Unknown	No algorithmic or hybrid stablecoin with material use on Movement was verified. As of Sep 27, 2026.
Bridges	First-partyMovement Bridge (LayerZero token contracts, Ethereum), Circle xReserve (USDCx), NEAR Intents (swap route into Movement)	Movement's bridge moves MOVE, USDC, USDT, ETH and WBTC between Ethereum and Movement using LayerZero token contracts, with daily MOVE limits at launch and a 3-day wait on withdrawals of the other assets to Ethereum. LayerZero lists Movement mainnet as endpoint 30325. NEAR Intents converts USDT from other chains into USDCx through solvers. Risk: Bridged tokens depend on the LayerZero verification settings the bridge operator chose, on the contracts' admin and upgrade keys, and, for USDCx, on Circle's xReserve attestations and the Movement-side minting contract. None of these contracts or settings were audited here. 12 13 31 33 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Block explorers	First-partyMovescan (explorer.movementnetwork.xyz)	Movescan is Movement's own explorer, listed in its endpoint table. Independent explorers were not verified. Explorer views are indexed provider data, not consensus. 11 37 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Hardware wallets	ThinLedger (through Motion, Aptos device app)	See custody rows: Ledger signing on Movement works only through Movement's Motion wallet with Ledger's Aptos app and blind signing. Trezor lists MOVE only as a token on Ethereum, Base and HyperEVM, which is not custody on the Movement network. 29 35 As of Sep 27, 2026.

Hardware-wallet custody

Hardware-wallet custody for Movement
Device maker	Status	What users can and cannot do
Ledger	Through an intermediaryMotion wallet (Move Industries), using Ledger's Aptos device appSame as native: No	Can: Import Ledger accounts into Motion and sign Movement transactions with keys kept on the device, per Movement's August 2026 guide Can: Install and update the Aptos device app through Ledger Wallet Cannot: Manage MOVE on the Movement network inside Ledger Wallet itself; Movement's guide says Motion handles accounts and tokens Cannot: Read transaction details on the device: Motion requires blind signing, so the device may show only a hashLedger's coin-page address for Movement returned 404 and its Aptos page does not mention Movement. Whether Ledger Wallet lists the Ethereum token version of MOVE was not verified. Motion's own homepage still lists hardware wallet support as on the way, which conflicts with the August 2026 guide. 29 34 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Trezor	None foundSame as native: No	Cannot: Sign transactions on the Movement network: Trezor lists no Movement network for MOVE and separately states that it does not support Aptos, whose account and signing format Movement usesTrezor's Movement page describes the M1 network but lists only Base, Ethereum and HyperEVM as networks for MOVE, used with Trezor Suite, MetaMask or Rabby. Holding that token version on another network is not custody on the Movement network, so it does not count here. 29 35 36 As of Sep 27, 2026.

Public data

iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Movement yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.

Public-data lookups for Movement
Lookup	Status	What it covers and its limits
Address or account	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.
Tokens and assets	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.
NFTs	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.
Transactions	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.

A lookup covers one address or transaction from one provider. It is never a complete wallet, and an error or private value is reported as unknown, not zero. About public data · Connect your AI

Sourced developments

Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.

Publication date · newest first

Published Aug 19, 2026ProductVerified against sources

Movement published a guide to using Ledger devices with the Motion wallet

Movement's guide explains importing Ledger accounts into Motion and signing Movement transactions with the Ledger Aptos app, noting that Motion requires blind signing so the device may show only a transaction hash.
- Implementation:guide published
- Release:available per Movement's guide
- Activation:Motion's homepage still lists hardware support as on the way; not tested here
Date basis: Date shown on the Movement guide and feed: 19 Aug 2026.

Sources: Movement Network — How to Use Ledger with Motion Wallet (external site) · Movement Network — Motion Wallet (external site) · Ledger — Aptos Wallet (external site)
Published Jul 28, 2026FoundationVerified against sources

Movement said MVMT Labs filed for Chapter 11 and the network is not part of the filing

In a CEO update, Movement said the network was operating normally, that MVMT Labs, Inc. had filed for Chapter 11 as a separate entity, and that Move Industries, the foundation, MOVE and the network are not part of that filing.
- Implementation:filing reported by Movement
- Release:not applicable to software
- Activation:Movement states network operations are unaffected
Date basis: Date shown on the Movement article and feed: 28 Jul 2026.

Source: Movement Network — An update from Torab Torabi, CEO, Movement (external site)
Published Mar 25, 2026ProductVerified against sources

Movement launched USDCx, a USDC-backed stablecoin through Circle xReserve

Movement announced USDCx, a stablecoin issued on its mainnet and backed 1:1 by USDC held in Circle's xReserve, with minting and redemption verified through xReserve attestations.
- Implementation:deployed per Movement's announcement
- Release:announced live 2026-03-25
- Activation:active per the announcement; supply and contract not reviewed
Date basis: Date shown on the Movement article and feed: 25 Mar 2026.

Sources: Movement Network — Introducing USDCx: Movement's Native USDC-Backed Stablecoin (external site) · Circle — How xReserve works (external site) · Circle — USDC Contract Addresses (external site)
Published Dec 29, 2025FoundationVerified against sources

Move Industries took over operations and the foundation said the Layer 1 switch was complete

The Movement Network Foundation announced that Move Industries now holds primary operating responsibility for the network on its behalf, and said the network had completed its transition to a sovereign Layer 1 with validator-based consensus and MOVE staking.
- Proposal:operating change first announced in May 2025
- Implementation:operating change completed per the announcement
- Release:Layer 1 transition stated as complete
- Activation:exact cut-over date not stated in the announcement
Date basis: Date shown on the Movement article and feed: 29 Dec 2025. The article gives no cut-over date; an on-chain epoch schedule change is dated 15 Dec 2025.

Sources: Movement Network — Movement Network Foundation and Move Industries Announce Completion of Operating Change (external site) · Movement mainnet public API — Mainnet REST API: transaction at version 39268531 (epoch schedule change) (external site) · Movement Docs — Validator Node (external site)
Published Dec 22, 2025ProtocolVerified against sources

Move Industries announced Movement's Layer 1 mainnet live

Move Industries said Movement had migrated from an Ethereum layer 2 to a sovereign Layer 1 with its own validator-based consensus and MOVE staking, and that funds, contracts and activity carried over without users or developers having to act.
- Proposal:Layer 1 described as under development in the October 2025 MiCA white paper
- Implementation:migration completed per Move Industries
- Release:announced live 2025-12-22
- Activation:exact cut-over time not stated in the announcement
Date basis: Release date on GlobeNewswire: 22 Dec 2025. The release gives no cut-over block or time; an on-chain epoch schedule change is dated 15 Dec 2025.

Sources: Move Industries via GlobeNewswire — Movement's M1 Mainnet Goes Live: The People's Chain Is Here (external site) · Movement Network Foundation — MOVE crypto-asset white paper under MiCA (external site) · Movement mainnet public API — Mainnet REST API: transaction at version 39268531 (epoch schedule change) (external site) · Movement Docs — Validator Node (external site) · Movement Docs — Bridge (external site)

Topics your AI can explain

Your AI can explain these topics for Movement through the connection, with sources.

What Movement is: a Move-language base layer and the MOVE token
Consensus and security: a four-validator BFT chain
Accounts, resources and objects: Movement's state model
MOVE, octas and how fees are charged
Finality and reorgs on Movement
Bridges and stablecoins: USDCx, bridged tokens and NEAR Intents
Wallets and hardware custody for MOVE
Who runs Movement: operators, upgrades and governance
Running a Movement full node

Known gaps

What this profile's review did not establish:

The exact cut-over time from the earlier Ethereum-anchored design to its own validator set was not found. The MiCA white paper (28 October 2025) still describes the older design, Move Industries announced the Layer 1 mainnet live on 22 December 2025 without giving a cut-over block, and the foundation called the switch complete on 29 December 2025. On-chain data shows the epoch schedule changed on 15 December 2025, which is consistent but not confirmation.
The validator set, staking settings, governance settings and administrative account figures are single on-chain readings taken by the original reviewer on 27 September 2026. The independent verification did not re-read chain endpoints, and no published Movement page states the validator count.
Operators of three of the four active validators, and any date for opening validator entry to the public, were not disclosed in reviewed sources.
Who holds the administrative account key and how protocol upgrades are approved today was not documented; the reading of the on-chain governance settings is this review's interpretation.
No CPU, memory or bandwidth minimums for full nodes or validators are published; storage figures on different Movement pages disagree.
Whether any transaction fees are burned is unclear: the whitepaper and on-chain data show fees flowing into a pool that pays staking rewards, while the MiCA white paper mentions fee burning.
Past outages or halts were not fully reviewed: a brief web search found no press report of a Movement network halt, and the status page shows only about two weeks of incident history.
Movement's docs disagree on the commit rule (two-chain in the whitepaper, three-chain on the node architecture page).
The bridge's LayerZero verifier settings, admin keys and whether MOVE can currently be withdrawn back to Ethereum were not verified.
Liquidity depth on Yuzu, other exchanges, and any algorithmic stablecoins were not reviewed.
Independent block explorers beyond Movement's own Movescan were not verified.
No released light client was found, despite light nodes being described in the docs.
The effect of the MVMT Labs Chapter 11 filing on repositories, node backups or services it ran was not assessed; Movement says the network and foundation are not part of the filing.

Sources

Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.

All 40 sources were checked in the last 30 days.

What is M1 (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
M1 Architecture (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Node-Level Architecture (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
M1 Whitepaper (protocol specification) (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Staking & Delegation (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
MOVE crypto-asset white paper under MiCA (date of notification 2025-10-28) (external site)Movement Network Foundation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Validator Node (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Nodes overview (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Full node requirements (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
movement-networks README (genesis, configs and restore scripts) (external site)Movement Network (GitHub) · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Network Endpoints (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Bridge (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
NEAR Intents (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Token Standards overview (external site)Movement Docs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mainnet REST API: 0x1::stake::ValidatorSet resource (external site)Movement mainnet public API · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mainnet REST API: 0x1::staking_config::StakingConfig resource (external site)Movement mainnet public API · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mainnet REST API: 0x1::aptos_governance::GovernanceConfig resource (external site)Movement mainnet public API · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mainnet REST API: resources of account 0xa550c18 (external site)Movement mainnet public API · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mainnet REST API: 0x1::governed_gas_pool::GovernedGasPoolExtension resource (external site)Movement mainnet public API · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
movement-network/aptos-core releases (fork of aptos-labs/aptos-core) (external site)Movement Network (GitHub) · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movement Network Foundation and Move Industries Announce Completion of Operating Change (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movement's M1 Mainnet Goes Live: The People's Chain Is Here (press release, 22 December 2025) (external site)Move Industries via GlobeNewswire · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
An update from Torab Torabi, CEO, Movement (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Public Mainnet Beta is Now Live (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Introducing USDCx: Movement's Native USDC-Backed Stablecoin (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movement Selects Yuzu Finance as its Primary DEX (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Yuzu documentation: introduction (external site)Yuzu Finance · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
gMove - Movement's liquid staking token is live (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
How to Use Ledger with Motion Wallet (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
USDC Contract Addresses (external site)Circle · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
How xReserve works (external site)Circle · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Supported Protocols (external site)Tether · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movement (LayerZero V2 mainnet endpoint) (external site)LayerZero · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Aptos Wallet (external site)Ledger · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movement wallet (external site)Trezor · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Aptos wallet (external site)Trezor · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movescan - Movement Network Explorer (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
MovementStreamChannel Move contract README (external site)Move Industries (GitHub) · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
mpp-movement: Machine Payments Protocol SDK for Movement (README) (external site)Move Industries (GitHub) · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Movement Network status (external site)Movement Network · retrieved Sep 27, 2026

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Funding disclosure

Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding