What it is. Movement is a fairly young blockchain, four months old as its own network, that has taken no steps at all to protect itself against future quantum computers.
What we found. A 2025 funding scandal cost the project its co-founder, a major US exchange listing, and most of its leadership stability, leaving it without the organized team you would need to ever make that protection happen.
Why it matters. Money and account history on this chain could be forged by a future quantum attacker, and right now there is no one in charge and no plan to fix it.
Movement Network is a sovereign Move-VM L1 forked from Aptos that completed its L2-to-L1 migration on 2025-12-22. Per the published M1 protocol specification, the chain runs Ed25519, Multi-Ed25519, and SHA-3, three quantum-vulnerable primitives, zero PQ family deployed. The 2025 token-dump scandal triggered Coinbase delisting (2025-05-15), termination of co-founder Rushi Manche (2025-05-07), and a Foundation-to-Move-Industries operational restructure completed alongside M1 mainnet launch, materially weakening coordination capacity for any future PQC migration. v2 baseline's BLS12-381 'from Aptos heritage' claim is corrected against Movement's own M1 spec.
Summary
Movement Network is a sovereign Move-VM Layer 1 forked from Aptos Core. M1 mainnet launched 2025-12-22 after an L2-to-L1 architectural pivot. Per the published M1 protocol specification, the chain runs Ed25519, Multi-Ed25519, and SHA-3 (Keccak), three quantum-vulnerable primitives, zero PQ family deployed. Aptos's AIP-137 (SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s as optional account signature) is 'Accepted' upstream but not yet activated on Aptos mainnet; Movement has published no statement on inheriting it. Foundation governance was disrupted in 2025 by an undisclosed market-maker contract that dumped ~5% of MOVE supply, triggering Coinbase delisting (2025-05-15), termination of co-founder Rushi Manche (2025-05-07), and a Foundation-to-Move-Industries operational restructure completed alongside M1 mainnet launch. Migration Stage 0 (Unaware). Raw QRI 19.15; after-cap QRI 19 (caps:, Gate-1a-Sig FAIL, Gate-1a-KEM FAIL all bind at 60; raw is below the cap). Band 1 Unaware (numerically at the boundary of Band 2). Confidence interval ±12. Key uncertainties: whether Movement intends to inherit Aptos AIP-137 when activated; validator-set count and Nakamoto coefficient telemetry not yet published; bridge-side concentration (LayerZero dominant) not telemetered.
What the gates say
- Gate 1a, Hybrid signature: FAIL , no documented hybrid signature composition AND or OR; no Movement-specific PQ signature is deployed; AIP-137 inheritance is undeclared
- Gate 1a, Hybrid KEM: FAIL , no hybrid KEM composition for RPC TLS or validator gossip transport; standard X25519/RSA-based TLS at all listed RPC partner endpoints
- Gate 1b, Commit-to-hash: COND , Gate 1a-Sig failed; OR-composition commit-to-hash not in scope
- Gate 2, Evidence reconstruction: PASS , every sub-score reconstructible from the cited public artifacts; ≥3 URLs per sub-score
- Gate 3, Primitive naming: PASS , Ed25519, Multi-Ed25519, SHA-3/Keccak, X25519, ML-DSA, ML-KEM, SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s named with mechanism
Burn-vs-rescue policy on file
Declared option f, Undeclared. No published Foundation policy on dormant-account / lost-key handling under quantum threat. No analogue mechanism (Hourglass-style rate-limit, freeze proposal, optional-migration window) has been scoped publicly.
Seven dimensions
Each dimension scores 0–100 internally; the weighted roll-up produces the QRI.
1 Cryptographic Exposure weight 15% 22 / 100
The M1 spec does not document BLS12-381 at consensus; consensus vote signatures are Ed25519. Whether pairing-based code paths persist in subsystems inherited from upstream Aptos framework is undocumented at the M1 spec level; partial credit reflects this gap.
Ed25519, transaction authentication, validator vote authentication, P2P messages · Multi-Ed25519, threshold/multi-signature scheme · SHA-3 (Keccak), block hashing and Jellyfish Merkle Tree commitments Ed25519→ Shor-break-via-DL-without-pairingsMulti-Ed25519→ Shor-break-via-DL-without-pairings (composition of Ed25519)SHA-3 / Keccak→ Grover-weaken (256→128 bit collision/preimage post-Grover)
0 PQ families. The chain runs Ed25519 (DL-based) signatures plus SHA-3 hashing, both classical.
No NIST PQC primitives deployed. The active cryptographic surface contains only NIST-classical primitives (Ed25519 ≈ 128-bit classical security; SHA3-256 ≈ 128-bit post-Grover collision resistance).
The Movement codebase forks Aptos Core (movementlabsxyz/movement-aptos-core), inheriting Aptos's Move Prover formal-verification tooling for Move smart contracts. Library provenance: forked Rust crates from aptos-labs/aptos-core. No published audit specifically of Movement-divergent cryptographic code. Cryptanalytic-maturity tier: Ed25519 = tier 1 (classical mature), SHA-3 = tier 2.
2 Quantum Recovery Exposure weight 10% 24 / 100
MOVE TGE 2024-12-09; M1 mainnet 2025-12-22. All accounts use Ed25519; pubkeys are revealed at first transaction under the Aptos/Move account model. Token-price collapse (~$0.017 USD on 2026-05-01) reduces dollar-value at risk but not the fraction of accounts with revealed pubkeys.
Sovereign-L1 horizon is ~4 months at evaluation; Mainnet Beta as L2 launched 2024-11-30, public phase 2025-03-10. Token-dump aftermath produced account abandonment; abandoned accounts with revealed pubkeys remain Forge-exposed indefinitely.
All historical Ed25519 signatures across M1 and the prior L2/Mainnet-Beta history are forgeable post-Shor. No published signature-scheme transition plan, no archival re-anchoring, no hash-based commitment to long-term-valid history.
Movement RPC endpoints (mainnet.movementnetwork.xyz plus partners Sentio, Hello Moon, BlockPi, Lava, Ankr, NodeOps) terminate TLS via standard X25519/RSA handshakes. No hybrid PQ KEM at any partner. Validator gossip (Aptos-derived AptosNet) uses noise-NK over X25519.
3 Metadata, Anonymity & Confidentiality weight 13% 25 / 100
Movement is a transparent ledger; the Move account model and Move-VM execution traces are publicly observable at the block-explorer level. No native shielding; no zk-account scheme.
Six partner RPCs (Sentio, Hello Moon, BlockPi, Lava, Ankr, NodeOps) plus the Movement primary endpoint. No traffic-share telemetry published; top-3 concentration is plausibly high but not measurable. Mempool propagation inherits Aptos's transparent design. Validator metadata-retention policy is undeclared.
Movement integrates LayerZero (layerzero-devtools is a forked repository under movementlabsxyz). Bridge transactions between Ethereum L1 and Movement create observable source-destination address pairs. No mixing or bridge-level privacy primitive is deployed.
Movement does not deploy on-chain encryption (no ElGamal note ciphertexts, no DL ring signatures, no zk-SNARK shielded pool at protocol level). Post-Shor, the marginal retroactive privacy loss beyond what is already public from a transparent ledger is small.
No mixnet, no on-chain commit-reveal mixing, no cryptographic shuffle, no cMix-class IT-secure mixing.
4 Migration Architecture weight 10% 46 / 100
The Aptos-derived account model exposes rotate_authentication_key, allowing the signature scheme bound to an account to change without changing the address. Movement has no published production instance of rotating to a new signature family, inherited capability, no deployed precedent.
Move account model supports authentication-key rotation natively (AA-equivalent at the Move framework level). No Movement-specific client-layer PQC path documented.
Movement executed an L2-to-L1 architectural pivot completed 2025-12-22. The sovereign-L1 chain is ~4 months old; coordinated-upgrade history is short. Concurrent governance turbulence (May 2025 leadership terminations, Foundation-to-Move-Industries operational transfer completed alongside M1 launch) reduces credibility of the coordination record.
Architecturally possible via the Move authentication-key abstraction. Movement has not announced or scoped a hybrid PQ deployment. Aptos AIP-137 (SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s, optional account scheme) is 'Accepted' with last-call-end 2026-02-09; not activated on Aptos mainnet. Movement has not stated whether it intends to merge upstream AIP-137 when it lands.
N/A, no stateful hash scheme (XMSS, LMS, leanXMSS) is deployed. Default 15.
N/A, Movement M1 consensus uses Ed25519 validator-vote signatures per the published M1 protocol specification. Ed25519 is non-aggregating; the BFT aggregation-path sub-score (which targets BLS-aggregating consensus paths) is N/A and excluded from Dim 4 normalization, consistent with v3.1 rule.
5 Deployment Execution weight 22% 15 / 100
0% of Movement M1 mainnet signing traffic is on PQC primitives. All transaction signatures are Ed25519.
No PQC code merged in the Movement consensus client. The Movement fork does not advertise any divergent PQC commit. Upstream Aptos has not yet merged AIP-137 implementation.
0% of validators run PQC keys. Validator-set composition uses Ed25519 keys per the protocol specification.
Voided per v3.1 rule (5a = 0). No published dated PQC migration milestones from Movement Foundation or Move Industries.
Trailing-12-month PQC announcements from Movement: 0. Trailing-12-month shipped PQC: 0. Ratio is 0/0 (undefined); no inflation. No washing tag fires.
Undisclosed, no PQ scheme is deployed and no public sizing analysis is published by Movement. Per the v3.1 scoring table, 'undisclosed = 0.'
6 Supply Chain Vendor Readiness weight 22% 5 / 100
Top-3 wallets recommended by Movement docs: OKX Wallet, Razor Wallet, Nightly Wallet. None publishes a PQC roadmap. Petra is Aptos-specific and is not in Movement's recommended-wallet list per Movement's own documentation; v2 baseline wallet list is corrected.
LayerZero is the dominant cross-chain messaging integration (movementlabsxyz/layerzero-devtools is a public fork). Stargate (LayerZero-acquired 2025) provides liquidity transport. LayerZero has no published PQC roadmap. Wormhole and Celer are secondary or absent integrations on Movement.
Post-Coinbase-delisting (2025-05-15), institutional custody coverage for MOVE narrowed. Fireblocks, BitGo, Anchorage have not published Movement-specific PQC support. No top-3 custodian publishes a Movement-specific PQC roadmap.
RPC partners: Sentio, Hello Moon, BlockPi, Lava, Ankr, NodeOps. No partner publishes a Movement-specific PQC RPC roadmap. HSM and TEE attestation chains for Movement validator infrastructure are not documented at the Foundation level.
7 Governance & Coordination weight 8% 15 / 100
M1 validator-based consensus is ~4 months old. Validator-count and Nakamoto-coefficient telemetry are not published in a Foundation-grade transparency report. The 2025 token-dump scandal concentrated active stake among long-term holders. Client diversity is single-client (movementlabsxyz/movement).
L2-to-L1 migration announced May 2025, executed December 2025. The same period included co-founder termination, leadership turnover, Coinbase delisting, and the Move Industries restructure. Coordination capacity on scheduled architecture changes is offset by governance turmoil.
Move Industries is the named primary operating service provider; CEO Torab Torabi, President Will Gaines, CTO Young Yang Liauw. Movement Network Foundation oversees governance. No named PQC working group, no named PQC technical lead, no published PQC mandate.
The 2025 token-dump event (undisclosed market-making contract, ~$38M intermediary dump, Coinbase delisting, Binance market-maker freeze) was answered with leadership termination and corporate restructuring, not a coordinated technical fork or rollback. No PQC-relevant adversarial precedent.
No canary, no Hourglass-style rate-limit, no cryptographic tripwire embedded in consensus, no automated-response mechanism.
X + Y vs Z, when does the math turn against you?
v3.1 demotes the X+Y vs Z timing test to a secondary signal, the headline output is Migration Stage. The timing test still answers the question: can this chain finish migrating before the threat lands?
Verdict
X+Y > 2030, Crisis Zone (vs Z10 2030); Outside risk window (vs Z25 2035)
Z-compliance
Outside compliance window for the NIST 2030 deprecation milestone
Source-disagreement disclosure
v3.1 requires every chain card to publish material divergences among authoritative sources, plus the delta-QRI under alternative weighting.
v2 baseline asserted BLS12-381 in consensus aggregation 'from Aptos heritage.' The Movement M1 protocol-specification page names Ed25519, Multi-Ed25519, and SHA-3 only, with no BLS aggregation declared at the M1 consensus signature path. This evaluation follows the published M1 specification and treats the v2 BLS claim as not currently substantiated by Movement's own documentation.
v2 baseline listed Petra in the wallet top-3. Movement's own documentation lists OKX Wallet, Razor, and Nightly as recommended wallets. Petra is corrected out.
'Accepted' in the Aptos AIP repository (last-call-end 2026-02-09); not yet activated on Aptos mainnet. Movement's intent to inherit upstream AIP-137 implementation when merged is undeclared. We score Movement's PQC posture against its own documentation, not against Aptos's AIP roadmap.
Delta-QRI under alternative weighting
Vendor-readiness 25% / governance 5% rebalance: -2 to +1, within CI; does not change Band or Migration Stage.
Announcement-to-shipped ratio
Announced: 0. Shipped: 0. Ratio: 0.
Tag: none, no inflation
Peers in the L1 profile
9 chains closest to Movement Network by Stage then QRI.