Movement, a project originally designed to link blockchains built using the Move programming language with Ethereum, is pivoting toward cross-border payments, remittances and dollar savings products, reflecting a broader shift across the increasingly crowded layer-2 landscape.
The company behind the blockchain said Tuesday that it had secured access to licensed payment systems in the U.S., Canada and European Union, and would focus on building stablecoin-based settlement infrastructure for emerging markets.
The direction change comes as a number of layer-2 projects reassess their original scaling-focused roadmaps amid growing competition and declining differentiation among networks. With dozens of Ethereum scaling chains now competing for users, liquidity and developer attention, some projects are turning toward payments and real-world financial applications as a path to growth.
Polygon, one of the earliest Ethereum scaling projects, has increasingly emphasized payments and stablecoin infrastructure in recent years, pursuing projects with fintechs and payment providers as transaction fees and rollup technology become commoditized.
While layer-2 networks were initially pitched as a solution to Ethereum’s scaling challenges, the sector’s rapid expansion has left many projects searching for more specialized use cases. For Movement, that increasingly means competing not with other blockchain networks, but with traditional payment systems and remittance providers.
The team behind Movement said it plans to leverage licensed payment partners alongside blockchain settlement infrastructure to target the roughly $685 billion remittance market serving low and middle-income countries.
As part of the transition, the Movement Network Foundation said it repurchased some 19% of tokens previously allocated to investors, equivalent to 4.1% of total token supply. MOVE was recently trading around 14.35 cents.
“Billions globally are financially disenfranchised and unserved,” CEO Torab Torabi said in a press release shared with CoinDesk. “Our mission is to marry licensed payment rails with onchain settlement to modernize financial services globally, particularly in emerging markets.”
Read more: Movement Labs Terminates Rushi Manche After MOVE Token Deals