Is Movement Safe?
Risk Grade: C (44/100)
Movement is rated as elevated risk — multiple novel mechanisms and notable interaction risks.
Elevated risk — market maker scandal, co-founder suspension, Coinbase delisting, and organizational restructuring create serious governance concerns on top of a centralized L2 with a novel unproven execution layer.
Movement is a Move language-based Ethereum Layer 2 (now pivoting toward L1) that launched its mainnet in December 2024 with the MEVM hybrid execution environment. The project has approximately $50M in TVL and raised $141M in funding. Its C- grade is driven primarily by a serious governance crisis: a market maker scandal in 2025 resulted in co-founder Rushi Manche's suspension, Coinbase delisting the MOVE token, a company rebrand to Move Industries, and an 80%+ token price decline from all-time highs. The centralized sequencer with no forced-inclusion mechanism, novel MEVM execution layer with limited production history, and ongoing organizational instability compound the risk profile.
TVL
$50M
Mechanisms
6
Interactions
5
Value Grade
D-
Key Risks for Movement Users
In 2025, a market maker scandal revealed that an obscure middleman was granted control of 66 million MOVE tokens through a deal that experts said incentivized pump-and-dump behavior, resulting in a $38M selloff. Co-founder Rushi Manche was suspended, and Coinbase delisted the MOVE token citing failure to meet listing standards.
The centralized sequencer has no forced-inclusion mechanism. If the operator goes offline, users cannot exit the system or process transactions through any alternative path. Given the organizational instability, this liveness dependency is particularly concerning.
Movement operates a novel MEVM (Move + EVM) hybrid execution environment with limited production history since its December 2024 mainnet launch. Novel execution layers have historically been sources of critical vulnerabilities due to untested edge cases.
Monthly token unlocks of approximately 170 million MOVE (5-6% of circulating supply) create persistent sell pressure. With 40% of tokens allocated to team and investors, insider selling could continue depressing token value for years.
Top Risk Factors
- •Movement Labs experienced a major market maker scandal in 2025: an obscure middleman (Rentech) was granted control of 66 million MOVE tokens through a deal that experts said incentivized pump-and-dump behavior, resulting in a $38M token dump shortly after launch. Co-founder Rushi Manche was suspended, and the company rebranded as Move Industries.
- •Coinbase delisted MOVE in May 2025 due to failure to meet listing standards, sending the token to all-time lows and signaling severe concerns about the project's governance and tokenomics from a major exchange.
- •Movement operates with a centralized sequencer and proposer with no permissionless fraud proofs or forced-inclusion mechanism. Users must trust the operator to process transactions honestly and maintain liveness, with no independent exit mechanism.
- •The project has pivoted from an Ethereum L2 to a standalone L1 strategy, creating uncertainty about the long-term architecture. Multiple rebrands (Movement Labs to Move Industries) and leadership changes signal organizational instability.
How Movement Compares to Peers
Movement ranks #33 of 37 L2 protocols (bottom quartile — among the riskiest). At a risk score of 44/100, it's 8 points riskier than the sector average of 36/100.
Adjacent peers: ZKsync Era (C, 43/100) is ranked just safer, and Blast (C, 44/100) is ranked just riskier.
See the full L2 sector leaderboard or the Movement vs Blast comparison.
Common Questions about Movement
Plain-English answers based on Movement's scores across Hindenrank's 8 risk dimensions. The highest-scoring (riskiest) dimension is Regulatory Risk (8/10).
Has Movement ever been hacked or exploited?
Movement has had some operational issues or moderate incidents in its history. The track record dimension scored 10/15 — not catastrophic, but enough to flag. Look at the specific events and whether they were addressed by the team before drawing conclusions.
How much money is at stake in Movement?
Movement currently holds roughly $50M in user deposits. Smaller TVL means individual depositors carry a larger share of any loss event, and it can be harder to exit a position quickly during stress.
What's the worst-case scenario for Movement?
Hindenrank has identified specific collapse scenarios for Movement. The most prominent: "Organizational Collapse and Network Abandonment". The trigger condition is Continued leadership instability following Rushi Manche's suspension, combined with ongoing regulatory scrutiny from the market maker scandal, causes key engineering talent to leave and funding to dry up. Reading through the full scenario list on the protocol page is the single best way to understand the actual failure modes — generic "smart contract risk" is rarely the thing that takes a protocol down.
Is Movement regulated or insured?
Movement faces material regulatory exposure (8/10 on this dimension). This may stem from counterparty concentration, jurisdiction risk, or specific products attracting enforcement attention. Users in regulated jurisdictions should consider whether they are comfortable with this profile before depositing. No DeFi protocol carries FDIC-style insurance — even with low regulatory risk, depositors are not protected in the way bank customers are.
What are the biggest red flags for Movement?
Hindenrank's retail-focused risk audit flagged: In 2025, a market maker scandal revealed that an obscure middleman was granted control of 66 million MOVE tokens through a deal that experts said incentivized pump-and-dump behavior, resulting in a $38M selloff. Co-founder Rushi Manche was suspended, and Coinbase delisted the MOVE token citing failure to meet listing standards. The centralized sequencer has no forced-inclusion mechanism. If the operator goes offline, users cannot exit the system or process transactions through any alternative path. Given the organizational instability, this liveness dependency is particularly concerning. Movement operates a novel MEVM (Move + EVM) hybrid execution environment with limited production history since its December 2024 mainnet launch. Novel execution layers have historically been sources of critical vulnerabilities due to untested edge cases.
Should beginners deposit into Movement?
Movement's C grade puts it in the elevated-risk band. This is not a beginner-friendly protocol. Anyone depositing here should treat the position as speculative and avoid concentrating significant savings in it.
How does Movement compare to safer L2 alternatives?
Movement is one protocol in Hindenrank's L2 coverage. The safest L2 protocols on the leaderboard tend to share three traits: a long incident-free track record, conservative mechanism design, and high-quality public documentation. Compare Movement against the full L2 ranking before committing capital.
For the full 8-dimension score breakdown, the radar chart, and dependency graph, see the Movement risk report.
Read the Full Movement Risk Report
This protocol has 2 collapse scenarios. 2 high-severity interaction risks identified. See the full mechanism classification, interaction matrix, and deep-dive recommendations.
View Full Report →Get risk alerts before it's too late
Weekly grade changes, downgrade alerts, and new protocol risk findings. Free.