Movement Labs Ousts Co-Founder in Leadership Shakeup—Rebrand Follows

Movement Labs just axed co-founder Rushi Manche—because nothing says ’strategic pivot’ like dumping the guy who helped build the thing. The blockchain infrastructure play is now installing fresh leadership and slapping on a new coat of paint with a full rebrand.

Because when the crypto markets get shaky, the first move is always: fire someone, rename everything, and pray the VCs don’t notice your token price. Classic ’building for the long term.’

Moving forward, the protocol plans to focus on technology and community as its “north stars,” as well as promising more transparent town halls and improved vetting and verifying systems.

However, it appears the network’s recent restructuring has done little to save its native token, MOVE, from the inevitable tumble it has taken since market making allegations erupted. At press time, MOVE has gone down nearly 10% in the past 24 hours. It is currently trading hands at $0.16.

In the past week, the token has plummeted more than 34%. In contrast, its daily trading volume has seen an exponential rise, having gone up by 141.4% compared to the previous trading day, indicating more market activity amidst the restructuring notice.

What happened to Movement Labs’ Rushi Manche?

Earlier this month, the protocol declared that it would be suspending co-founder Rushi Manche in light of a recent scandal involving one of its market makers, Rentech. This led to to the token being delisted from Coinbase, effectively suspending all related trading pairs.

At the time, the protocol was still undergoing investigations from third-party reviewer Groom Lake “regarding organizational governance and recent incidents involving a market maker.”

The token dump occurred December last year, when Rentech allegedly sold 66 million MOVE for an estimated profit of 38 million USDT (USDT). Binance reported the issue in March, freezing the money and notifying the Movement Foundation and Movement Labs.

Since then, the protocol has cut off all ties with the market Maker and pledged a $38 million USDT buyback through a new reserve fund.