Plasma CEO Paul Faecks denies allegations of team members selling locked XPL tokens

CEO and founder Paul Faecks has shut down rumors about XPL after investors bashed the project for allegedly selling locked tokens, which could have been the reason why the token tanked by almost 45% in price in the last four days.

The Tether-backed Layer-1 stablecoin-focused payments network came under fire this week after online chatter that team members had sold locked XPL tokens spread. Trying to calm the community, Paul issued a rebuttal statement on X on Thursday, insisting that no such sales had taken place.

“No team members have sold any XPL,” he wrote. “All investor and team XPL is locked for three years with a one-year cliff.”

Accusations spew in relations with other projects

The allegations directed at Plasma went beyond insider token sales to accusations that most members of its development team came from Blast and Blur, two projects that are down 99% from their all-time-high price levels at the time of this publication.

Faecks told the community that only three of Plasma’s roughly 50 employees had worked at either Blast or Blur. 

“Our team members also come from Google, Facebook, Square, Temasek, Goldman Sachs, and Nuvei. To say our team is ‘ex-Blast’ is to say it is ‘ex’ of any of these firms. We are proud of the team we’ve assembled at Plasma,” he surmised.

The project founder also addressed the rumors about supposed token transfers to Wintermute, a London-based market-making firm. On-chain data shared by an anonymous account on X suggested large quantities of XPL were moved from the Plasma Team Vault to exchanges, totaling more than 600 million tokens by late September.

OK so I actually dug into what happened with $XPL, the vaults, and the Wintermute accusations.

First, I wanted to see where the Plasma Team Vault was sending their tokens so I looked at each notable transfer from their vault.

Vault address:… https://t.co/xZgm9D2u0U pic.twitter.com/lKbWmuh2AA

— ManaMoon (@ManaMoonNFT) September 30, 2025

According to the analysis, approximately 250 million XPL were sent to Binance, 120 million to Bitfinex, and another 260 million to other centralized exchanges. The account, going by the username ManaMoonNFT, suggested Wintermute wallets may have handled a significant share of these tokens, adding fuel to the suspicions of coordinated selling by the Plasma team.

“The Wintermute Binance deposit also received a lot of tokens from exchanges and seemed to have started marketmaking a bit on day 1, but the activity and size of tokens moved seemed to increase starting day 2… If team selling happened, it was probably on Binance,” the user wrote.

Faecks denied having any relationship with Wintermute by insisting Plasma “has not engaged Wintermute as a market maker.” 

“We have never contracted with Wintermute for any of their services. We have the same information as the public on Wintermute’s ownership of XPL. Plasma is laser-focused on building the future of money and won’t be commenting further. Now back to work,” the founder concluded.

XPL public sale and token allocations

XPL is the native token of Plasma that facilitates transaction settlement, staking rewards for validators, and ecosystem incentives. According to the project developers, the token has a similar function to Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain and Ether on Ethereum, acting as both a utility and reward mechanism.

During its public sale held on July 17, 10% of the 10 billion tokens XPL supply, equivalent to one billion tokens, was distributed to deposit campaign participants. 

Coins purchased by non-US buyers were unlocked at the launch of Plasma’s public mainnet beta on September 25, while those acquired by US investors are subject to a 12-month lock-up ending July 2026.

According to Plasma’s insight on XPL allocations. 40% of the total supply, or four billion tokens, were reserved for ecosystem and growth purposes. Of this total, 800 million were unlocked immediately at mainnet beta to fund liquidity, DeFi incentives, and exchange integrations. 

3.2 billion tokens are being released monthly over three years, reaching full unlock by the third anniversary of the mainnet beta, which falls around September 2028. The development team holds about 2.5 billion tokens locked under a one-year cliff for one-third of the allocation and gradual release of the remainder over two years, as Paul insinuated.

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