Movement Labs, the cryptographic startup plagued by scandals backed by Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial, silently promised great bets of his Token to the first inmates, not revealed agreements that now raise new questions about who really has power behind the scene.
Even before its launch of Tokens, Movement Labs committed great portions of Move’s supply to a handful of early advisors, agreements that were never revealed to investors and only emerged through internal documents reviewed by Coindesk.
Two commercial memories obtained by Coindesk, a promising a single advisor of almost $ 2 million a year, show how the movement, founded in 2023 by two 20 -year -old vanderbilt dropouts, relied a lot on these advisors to establish a support point in the cryptographic industry.
Movement Labs said the agreements, dated shortly after the foundation of the project, were of an exploratory and non -binding nature.
The existence of the agreements, however, sheds new light on the chaotic internal functioning of the movement, which was criticized after Coendesk reported last month that the agreements for the manufacture of privileged information allowed Token’s discharge by experts.
The consequences have caused waves of pointing to the fingers within the company, focusing on who directed the movement to a predatory agreement with a Chinese market manufacturer by virtue of terms that analysts say that the preferred predatory sale.
The tension has become a public crack among the co -founders Rushi Manche, who was fired by Movement Labs this month, and Cooper Scanlon, who backed off his role as CEO but remains in the company.
“When we started the movement, I was the CTO, leading the engineering team. I left most commercial decisions, including contracts, Cooper,” Manche told Coindesk when I contacted to comment. “When the priorities changed, our roles changed, but Cooper’s decisions in the first days greatly formed the way it was launch.”
Shadow advisors
Coendesk spoke with more than a dozen people familiar with the movement during their research, including current and previous employees who were granted anonymity so that they could speak freely.
The agreements obtained by Coindesk refer to Sam Thapaliya and Vinit Parekh, who held roles behind the scene in the project configuration during their early stages. Together, they were assigned access to up to 10% of the total movement of total movement in signed memorandes of understanding that experts say they were intentionally out of books.
Thapaliya, the CEO of the ZEBEC protocol and early advisor to Manche and Scanlon, received 5% of the Move supply for marketing and market manufacturing purposes, according to one of the agreements obtained by Coindesk. A second agreement assigned Thapaliya 2.5% of the total offer of the Token, with a value of more than $ 50 million at recent prices.
![Excerpt from the agreement between Sam Thapaliya ("Thapalyia Trust") and the movement laboratories (obtained by Coindesk) [Click to view document]](https://pakgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Movement-Labs-secretly-promised-the-advisors-of-millions-in-tokens)
The movement laboratories told Coindesk that the agreements signed with Thapaliya were not binding, but Thapaliya said the agreements “were never annulled.”
While framed as an understanding memorandums, normally considered non -binding, the agreements examined by Coindesk also include provisions that indicate that “both parties” must consent to their termination.
“Planning to legally pursue my claim to recover 2.5% of tokens,” said Thapaliya.
Movement employees referred to Thapaliya as a “shadow co -founder” and said Scanlon and Manche often consulted it for important decisions.
His name also appeared in internal communications with respect to the agreement of the movement with web3port. Subsequently, the Chinese market manufacturer was blamed for throwing $ 38 million in chips after Move’s debut, an event that caused a ban on the Binance and Binance account.
The amount lent to Web3port, 5% of Move’s supply was identical to Thapaliya according to the agreement.
When Condesk contacted him before the initial investigation, Thapaliya denied having had some financial interest in the movement laboratories or the movement foundation. He also denied participation in the web3port agreement.
In subsequent messages on signal, Thapaliya told Coindesk that his work with the movement was consistent with his agreement: “According to the contract signed in February 2023, I fulfilled the agreed terms when supporting Cooper [Scanlon] In discussions related to change, the allocation of Token strategy, helping with the selection of market manufacturers and helping to hire the team that audit its Airdrop model ”.
Memoraondos of understanding
The use of informal agreements to silently assign tokens to experts reflects a broader pattern within the cryptographic industry, where large sums can change hands without appearing in official disseminations for fundraising.
In 2024, Coindesk reported that Eclipse, another project linked to Thapaliya, secretly assigned 5% of its tokens supply to an employee in Polychain, an important cryptographic risk company that later invested in the project. Policina is also an investor in movement laboratories. The Eclipse agreement with the police employee was discarded after the publication of Coindesk’s investigation.
What these cases illustrate is not necessarily fraud, but the ease with which new encryption companies can make significant financial commitments behind closed doors, commitments that can then shape the trajectory of a complete token ecosystem, often without the community or even some employees who know.
A person familiar with the matter said that the movement agreements were adapted to explicitly disseminate disseminates to investors or members of the community.
In another 2023 agreement obtained by COINDESK, Movement Labs agrees to give an entity linked to Vinit Parekh, “Digital Incubation Group”, $ 50,000 annually for every $ 1 million collected by Movement Labs, a sum that would total approximately $ 2 million per year, based on the $ 38 million of the movement in funds. Another agreement granted a separate Parekh entity control of the 2.5% of the movement tokens supply.
In exchange for its assignment, the Parekh firm, Digital Incubation Group, was in charge of a broad mandate, which includes: “Development of the strategy framework, validated by the relevant stakeholders; consultation through the process of increase prior to the collection of seeds (including advice and connection with investors), the increase in nearby seeds; development of the tokenomics and the release plan; participate in the structure of the team prior to production. “
Like Thapaliya’s agreements, the Parekh were structured as an understanding memorandes with a termination clause required by the consent of both “parties.” Parekh and Movement Labs said the agreements were exploratory and that the funds never changed hands between any of the parties.
Two people close to Movement Labs said Parekh, a Microsoft products manager turned into a blockchain industry consultant, was a frequent presence in the Office of Movement in San Francisco and played a role in the company’s hiring, marketing and strategy decisions.
“I just care about the ecosystem,” Parekh told Coendesk in an interview. “I did not give money or anyone I know,” in relation to the agreements. “[b]UT I helped the marketing strategy and to understand how to do the market to go to the market. “
A crack among the founders
The consequences of the Movement Market Manufacture scandal have exposed a wide gap among their co -founders, Manche and Scanlon.
After an excerpt from one of Thapaliya’s agreements filtered in X, Manche pointed out Scanlon’s signature in the Memorandum, highlighting the role of his former partner in the approval of the agreement. He also published a message that questioned if the laboratory movement was “launching [Manche] Under the bus “while Scanlon” played innocent. “
Manche was expelled from Movement Labs earlier this month, shortly after Coendesk reported that he had helped coordinate the controversial market manufacturing agreement with web3port and an intermediary known as Rentech, a third that the movement then said that it was declared in the agreement.
Since then, Coindesk learned that Manche also played a role in facilitation of a separate agreement between web3port and Kaito, another cryptographic project that shares the same director and general advisor as the Movement Foundation. A contract reviewed by COINDESK shows that the Openkaito Foundation lent 2.5% of its tokens supply to “whisper”, an entity linked to web3port.
The agreement, which was also filtered in X on an anonymous account, was ended shortly after its signature, according to an X position of the founder of Kaito Yu Hu. Unlike the movement agreement, it did not include terms that experts said that the incentive behavior of pump and diver.
A person familiar with the matter said that Manche introduced Kaito to Rentech, who then connected the project to Web3port.
The controversy has already abolished the reputation of the movement in an industry that once saw the startup as a rising star. Coinbase, the highest US encryption exchange, announced that it would suspend the trade of the move file on May 15. The price of Token fell 50% in the following week.
On May 7, Movement Labs said it would turn a new entity, Move Industries, to serve as the main developer of the network. Scanlon remains with the organization, but has resigned as CEO.
