Movement Network Foundation investigates 'market maker abnormalities' amid alleged co-founder hiatus: Blockworks

Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche has reportedly taken a “temporary leave of absence” amid rising controversy around the project, according to a Blockworks report on Tuesday that cited anonymous sources. 

This also comes as the Movement Network Foundation reportedly launches a third-party investigation into “market maker abnormalities," potentially to look into issues raised last month by Binance, which delisted an unnamed market maker for “misconduct” involving the MOVE token on its platform.

It’s unclear when Manche’s alleged hiatus began and if it is ongoing. According to Blockworks, the co-founder was not present at a company offsite last week. Additionally, his Slack account appeared to have been deactivated for several days, though it was reportedly back online by the end of the day Monday. 

Manche has been active on X posting about Movement, including “weekly ecosystem syncs” related to MOVE business development deals involving his co-founder Cooper Scanlon. Following Blockworks' report on Tuesday, he also posted a photo of himself speaking at a conference, allegedly taken within the past week, where he is named as a co-founder of Movement Labs. 

The Block has reached out to Manche and Movement Labs for comment. MOVE was down approximately 5% on the day and 10% at press time.

Market maker irregularities

Last month, Binance announced it had identified a market maker who allegedly dumped 66 million MOVE tokens shortly after launch and placed "little buy orders." The crypto exchange said it soon after informed Movement Labs and Movement Foundation of the irregularities — market makers are meant to trade both sides of the market — and froze millions worth of seemingly ill-gotten proceeds "for the purpose of compensating users."

In a statement at the time, the foundation confirmed it had been informed of Binance’s ongoing investigation and was previously unaware of the malicious trading activity. It also announced a 38 million USDT buyback program to "purchase MOVE for long-term use and to return the USDT liquidity to the Movement ecosystem."

Like its forerunners, Aptos and Sui, Movement uses the Move programming language initially designed by Meta for the now-defunct Diem stablecoin project. There has been some confusion about exactly how to describe Movement, which uses the Ethereum base layer for security, but at times has distanced itself from the Layer 2 label. 

The Movement team has had to deal with communications crises in the past. In January, Manche refuted concerns about potential insider trading after it came to light that the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial team purchased MOVE tokens ahead of a mainnet launch and news that the Movement team was talking to DOGE head Elon Musk about potential blockchain integrations.