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

As the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem keeps facing unresolved scalability challenges, startups keep searching for a solution that would open doors for billions worth of dollars in liquidity from the decentralized finance space.

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

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

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

To achieve its goal, Surge has teamed up with Movement Labs so that it could bring liquidity to Move-based decentralized finance, enabling developers to interoperate between the Bitcoin and Move ecosystems. Surge co-founder Yash Belavadi says the funding would help the startup provide “scaling infrastructure so teams can focus on specific use-cases like defi, micropayments, gaming, or non-financial applications.”

With the funding, Surge is set to launch its testnet soon, although specific timelines remain undisclosed.

The push for defi on the Bitcoin network has surged following a research report from Pantera Capital, a crypto venture capital firm, which projected that the Bitcoin-based defi ecosystem could draw in hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity via web3 protocols, indicating that its sector might achieve a market share similar to that of Ethereum.