Bitcoin-focused protocol Surge nabs $1.8m to bring Move-based rollups

Bitcoin protocol Surge has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding to address the network’s scalability issues.

As the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem faces unresolved scalability challenges, startups continue to search for a solution that will unlock billions of dollars worth of liquidity from the decentralized finance space.

Surge, a Bitcoin-centric protocol developed to unlock the BTCfi economy, has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding to unlock the cryptocurrency’s “full potential as a global currency and base layer for innovation,” according to a press release shared with the cryptocurrency. . news.

Backed by firms like Autonomy, Gerstenbrot Capital and Double Peak Group, as well as angel investors like CoinGecko co-founders Bobby Ong and TM Lee, Surge looks to address the limitations of previous scalability solutions like SegWit and Taproot.

The startup’s approach, called MetaLayer, uses Bitcoin’s security model “without requiring soft or hard forks,” which includes cryptographic techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs and Inter-Blockchain Communication, the press release states.

Increase that will bring Move-based roundups to Bitcoin

To achieve its goal, Surge partnered with Movement Labs to bring liquidity to Move-based decentralized finance and enable developers to interoperate between the Bitcoin and Move ecosystems. Surge co-founder Yash Belavadi said the funding will help the startup provide “scaling infrastructure so teams can focus on specific use cases such as defi, micropayments, gaming or non-financial applications.”

With the funding, Surge will launch its testnet soon, but specific timelines have not been announced.

Demand for defi on the Bitcoin network has surged following a research report from Pantera Capital, a crypto venture capital firm, predicting that the Bitcoin-based defi ecosystem could attract hundreds of billions of dollars of liquidity through web3 protocols. The industry could reach a market share similar to that of Ethereum.