UP Network sells phones through lies? Movement co-founder reveals no promised airdrops, post deleted

Having raised $41.4 million, the well-backed Movement Labs announced the launch of a testnet on July 31, with over 300 missions during the testnet phase. One of the projects on Movement, called Up Network, unveiled UP Mobile.

In layman's terms, it's another mobile phone for sale. This phone is limited to 10,000 units and offers a 0.1% split of Movement's future airdropped tokens and 1% of UP tokens, along with airdrops of tokens from 45 projects in the Movement ecosystem. However, shortly after the launch of UP Mobile, Movement co-founder Rushi Manche took to Twitter to state that all commitments from UP Network were false and the post has been deleted.

Extremely Sensational Narrative, Modular Implementation of Move Language with Ethereum Compatibility

Movement Labs has recently launched two public chains, focusing on achieving compatibility between the Move language and Ethereum's Solidity language. M1 is a Layer 1 focusing on decentralized sequencers, emphasizing network stability, fairness, and resistance to censorship, currently using a PoS mechanism. M2 is a zkEVM Layer 2, aiming to integrate Move language public chains like the recently discussed Sui and Aptos, as well as interoperability with the Ethereum ecosystem.

Technically, Movement Labs has introduced the development tool Movement SDK, which can be seen as a bridge allowing modularity and interoperability between blockchain environments. It connects the Ethereum and Move ecosystems, providing a flexible and efficient platform.

It consists mainly of three parts:

• MoveVM: A virtual machine using the Move language, the server acts as a secure engine for running smart contracts, meeting Move's security and efficiency principles
• Fractal: A bridge to Solidity, allowing developers to deploy existing Solidity contracts on MoveVM.
• Custom adapters for sequencer networks and DA services: Enable seamless integration with sequencer networks and data availability layers.

Since Movement Labs received seed funding from dao5 and other leading investors in September 2023, the Series A funding came from Hack VC, Polychain, OKX Ventures, and the Move language public chain Aptos. On May 1, 2024, Binance Labs showed interest, with disclosed funding reaching $41.4 million, indicating institutional support for the project.

False Airdrop Promises? Movement Denies Allegations

One of the key players, UP Network, is built on Movement, connecting mobile devices with the blockchain's Web 3 abstraction layer, currently without any institutional funding news.

Previously announced to go on sale at 8:00 pm Taiwan time on August 12, the project team's rewards, including Movement token airdrops and other projects within the ecosystem, were considered the "golden shovel" of the Movement ecosystem. However, there was no rush to buy after the sale, with possibly less than a thousand units sold.

In the early hours of the following day, a Chinese crypto KOL on Twitter criticized the hardware level of the phone, which was roughly equivalent to about 2,000 RMB, being sold for 5,000 RMB. At the same time, it was pointed out that it would be difficult to break even with the airdropped tokens based on the funding valuation, expressing disappointment.

In contrast, the price of the Solana Saga phone was reduced from $1,000 to $599, and the TON ecosystem phone launched by Oyster Labs is priced at around $99.

Following the KOL's post, Movement founder Rushi Manche replied that all promises from UP Network were not true, as Movement had not committed to providing such airdrops to any ecosystem projects. He emphasized that all financial communications should be handled by the Movement Foundation and its team members, requesting the removal of false information. The post has since been deleted.

UP Network has previously collaborated with Movement Labs, and perhaps interacted closely with other ecosystem projects. However, there may have been differences in airdrop promotions with Movement Labs, leading to this incident, leaving many KOLs who helped promote it in the community confused.

After deleting the post, Rushi Manche did not provide further responses, with only a community recording some content; there has been no further announcement from Movement founder Rushi Manche and UP Network at the time of writing.