Why a foundation

If we built it right, we shouldn't be the ones running it.

Surge started as a thesis: that Bitcoiners deserve credit markets that reflect Bitcoin's values. Self-custody. Verifiability. No rehypothecation. No trust-me layers. We built the protocol - Taproot vaults, threshold signing, immutable contracts on Base - to make that thesis real.

And then we ran into the same wall every infrastructure team eventually hits: the better the protocol gets, the more dangerous it becomes that one company controls it.

If Amby can change the contracts, the contracts aren't really immutable. If Amby can rotate the signer set, the network isn't really distributed. If Amby disappears, your Bitcoin shouldn't disappear with us - and the way to make sure of that is to stop being the entity that decides.

So we're separating ourselves from the thing we built. Amby will keep doing what software publishers do: writing code, shipping the consumer app at surge.credit, releasing open-source clients including the unilateral exit. We'll be one builder among several, on infrastructure we no longer unilaterally control.

The Surge Foundation - non-profit, in formation, registered in the Cayman Islands - will steward the protocol layer. The DCN. The contracts. The upgrade path. It will license the technology from us, but it will not answer to us. It will answer to participants: borrowers, liquidity providers, signer operators. The people with skin in the game.

This is the structural commitment that matches the cryptographic one. Threshold signing without governance separation is theater; a custody network where the publisher can swap the signers isn't a custody network. We don't want to be in the position of being trusted. We want to be in the position of being verifiable.

The foundation is in formation. The full governance design will be published before mainnet upgrades route through it. Until then, this page is the commitment in writing.

Amby, Inc. - San Francisco · Delaware