Movement opened its public mainnet beta to users and builders

Movement Network opened its public mainnet beta on March 10, 2025, enabling permissionless smart-contract deployment and public user access for the first time. The launch moved the Move-based network beyond its restricted developer phase and gave applications an operating environment connected to Ethereum through a canonical bridge.

The word “beta” carried real weight. Movement’s own launch record said additional features would arrive later, including a fast-finality mechanism and decentralized sequencing. The verified development was therefore a public, usable network—not completion of every element in its proposed architecture.

What became available

Developers could deploy applications without foundation approval, while users could interact with wallets and applications identified by Movement as live. The foundation listed early uses including token swaps, lending, borrowing, staking, non-fungible tokens and prediction markets. That list established advertised availability, not independent evidence of adoption, security or sustained transaction activity.

MOVE served as the network’s native gas token. Movement used the Move Virtual Machine with an Aptos-derived version of the Move language, which was originally developed at Meta around resource-oriented digital assets. The architecture was intended to combine Move execution with external data-availability and Ethereum-settlement components.

The March 10 technical description said a leader node batched transactions and supplied partial ordering, while Celestia facilitated final transaction sequencing. Transaction blocks were anchored to Ethereum, but the foundation described state attestations and a faster confirmation layer as parts of a forthcoming settlement mechanism. It also said decentralized sequencing remained future work.

Those qualifications matter. Calling the beta “permissionless” accurately described application deployment and user entry; it did not establish that every infrastructure component was decentralized on March 10.

The bridge opened with restrictions

Movement launched a canonical bridge powered by LayerZero for transfers between Ethereum and Movement. The foundation identified MOVE, USDT, USDC, WETH and WBTC as supported assets.

Operational safeguards constrained the initial service. The launch post set a 75 million MOVE inbound limit for the first day and 25 million MOVE per day afterward. It described no waiting period from Ethereum into Movement and a delay for transfers in the opposite direction.

Movement’s two same-day records were not perfectly consistent about outbound service. The launch article said MOVE could not temporarily return to Ethereum and also referred to an outbound waiting period of up to three days. The bridge guide said outbound transfers were available but would take approximately three to five days. The defensible event-day conclusion is that the bridge was live with significant limits, while the precise initial status and timing of withdrawals were not fully reconciled in the published documentation.

A large liquidity claim needed caution

The foundation’s distributed press release promoted more than $250 million in launch total value locked through its Cornucopia liquidity program. Inside the same release, a co-founder referred to more than $233 million. Movement’s own launch article used broader language, saying more than $200 million was flowing into Cornucopia vaults and then to the network.

These figures were project-reported snapshots with differing descriptions. The records did not provide a common valuation timestamp, asset-by-asset calculation, wallet inventory or reconciliation between deposits in preparatory vaults and assets already deployed on Movement. Coinburn therefore cannot verify that $250 million was independently observable as on-chain Movement TVL on March 10.

Even with that limitation, Cornucopia was institutionally relevant. New smart-contract networks frequently need usable liquidity before exchanges, lending markets and other applications can function. Pre-positioned BTC-, ETH-, MOVE- and stablecoin-linked assets were intended to reduce that cold-start problem, although deposited capital did not prove organic demand or productive use.

What March 10 established

The surviving record supports a narrow but consequential conclusion: Movement became publicly usable for permissionless applications on March 10, with an operating bridge and an announced pool of pre-arranged liquidity. It does not establish the advertised throughput, security, decentralization, adoption or TVL as independently measured outcomes.

The important follow-up evidence would have been chain-level bridge balances, application deposits, transaction counts, sequencer changes and activation records for the unfinished settlement features. On March 10, those remained measurements or milestones still to be demonstrated.