Movement Labs Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy While Pursuing Cross-Border Payments Pivot

Movement Labs, the developer of the Movement blockchain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 21, 2026. The filing follows months of upheaval that included a controversial market-making agreement, an internal investigation into its MOVE token launch, a Binance ban tied to its market maker and a last-ditch pivot from Ethereum scaling to cross-border payments.

Movement Labs built an Ethereum layer-2 network using the Move programming language originally developed at Meta.

The project launched with the goal of bringing Move-based smart contracts to Ethereum while offering faster and cheaper transactions. Its troubles began shortly after the December 2025 launch of the MOVE token. An April 2025 CoinDesk investigation found that Movement was examining whether it had been misled into signing a market-making agreement that handed a single counterparty unusual influence over MOVE's circulating supply.

Internal documents reviewed by CoinDesk at the time showed the arrangement allowed 66 million MOVE tokens to be sold into the market one day after the token debuted, contributing to a sharp decline in price. The controversy centered on Rentech, a little-known intermediary that appeared in contracts connected to Chinese market maker Web3Port.

According to documents obtained by CoinDesk, Movement executives later questioned whether the foundation believed Rentech was affiliated with Web3Port when it was not.

Rentech has denied any wrongdoing or misrepresentation. The fallout extended beyond Movement. Binance banned the market-making account involved in the token launch for what it described as misconduct, while Movement launched a token buyback program and hired outside firm Groom Lake to review the events surrounding the deal.