Movement relaunches as Layer 1 focused on stablecoin settlement after token-dumping scandal

Movement, the blockchain project that faced a token-dumping scandal that led to the removal of its co-founder Rushi Manche last year, has relaunched as a standalone Layer 1 network targeting stablecoin payments and remittances in emerging markets. Current CEO Torab Torabi announced the pivot , adding that it comes with partnerships, one of which is Circle, and access to licensed payment infrastructure across the US, Canada, and the European Union. How did Movement move from Ethereum Layer 2 to a sovereign chain? Movement initially started out as an Ethereum Layer 2 built on the Move programming language, the same code Facebook developed for the abandoned Libra/Diem project. Torabi reportedly stated that the old network was a “Frankenstein” chain that was put together from components like Celestia for data availability, with latency around seven seconds per transaction. “If you’re seven seconds in L2, what the hell is the point of you existing to begin with, right?” Torabi said in an interview. Movement’s new architecture runs its own validator set on a dedicated Layer 1, targeting settlement times under 500 milliseconds, which is over fourteen times faster than seven seconds. Dozens of Ethereum scaling networks compete for users and liquidity, and now some projects are abandoning the general-purpose rollup thesis in favor of specialized applications. Polygon is reported to have made a similar shift toward payments infrastructure. Stablecoin rails and emerging market ambitions Move Industries, the entity that assumed core development responsibilities after the scandal, has lined up partnerships with Circle, wallet startups KAST and Sorted, and tokenization projects including Oro, Yuzu Money, and Zoth, according to its announcement. Circle launched USDCx as a natively issued stablecoin on Movement in March 2026 to support payments, treasury, and savings products, according to Circle’s own announcement on X. Torabi stated that the company’s ambitions are focused on the roughly $685 billion remittance market serving low and middle-income countries. According to the CEO, Movement is no longer a crypto company. “We are a fintech company that uses blockchain rails,” he told The Block. However, that market is not free from competition, as the likes of Stripe and Paradigm are building out Tempo, major institutions back Canton, and established chains like Solana and Ethereum already process significant stablecoin volume. Torabi acknowledged the pressure but said many of Movement’s new partnerships came inbound. He said, “Circle was pretty aggressive in wanting to obviously win market share in ‘the countries you can’t pronounce.'” Cleaning up the token mess The relaunch also involved financial restructuring. The Movement Network Foundation repurchased around 19% of tokens that had been allocated to investors, equivalent to about 4.2% of the total supply. According to Torabi, the buyback was a chance to bring in investors aligned with the new direction. Analysts say that this cleanup was necessary. In early 2025, a Binance investigation found that Rentech, a market maker connected to Movement, controlled 66 million MOVE tokens (about 5% of the total supply) and sold them immediately after the token’s debut. This action led to a $38 million sell-off, causing both Binance and Coinbase to suspend MOVE trading. It was later reported that leaked internal documents showed Movement Labs had promised as much as 10% of the token supply to shadow advisers through undisclosed agreements, making the fallout take a turn for the worse. The then-CEO and cofounder, Manche, was let go by Movement Labs in May 2025 after an internal investigation tied him to the $38 million market manipulation incident. He went on to launch Nyx Group in December 2025, a $100 million investment vehicle backing blockchain founders. The MOVE token currently trades around $0.014, according to CoinMarketCap , down from an all-time high of $1.45 in December 2024, a decline of over 99%. Torabi claims the project has kept more than 90% of its team since the scandal, stating that the retention rate is a sign that builders still believe in the underlying technology even if the brand took damage. Movement is now putting the incident in its past and charting a new path under its new leadership, and this time around, it is betting its future on financial services and hoping that its latest pivot is enough to make users forgive its past misgivings. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free .