# Introduction
Welcome to Surge. We'll build out this docs over time but for now we are just using this to provide resources and tutorials on using our public testnet. Here's a quick 10 second introduction.
* Surge is the first non-custodial, permissionless market making platform on Cardano
* Built to bring professional grade automated trading to anyone, regardless of skill level
* Capable of Billions of dollars in monthly Cardano on-chain activity
* Lead developer contributed to core Cardano infrastructure
* Audit by leading Cardano firm in progress
For more links and resources, see [here](https://linktr.ee/surgecardano). Thank you for the support and we hope you enjoy using the platform.
**Official Presale Portal:** \
\&#xNAN;**$SURGE Token ID:** e992ef75f2367e6ecd93716ae88eba0d005dd91fd3a21f650b6496b5
# What is Surge?
## What is Surge
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Surge is the **first fully non-custodial, permissionless trade automation platform** built specifically for the Cardano blockchain. It is a comprehensive trading automation platform designed to deliver **professional-grade strategies.** Such as market making and algorithmic arbitrage; that were traditionally reserved for major financial institutions, trading firms, and developers, and make them accessible to every user.
By embodying Cardano’s core values of decentralization, accessibility, and user sovereignty, Surge aims to unlock significant growth in the ecosystem's on-chain liquidity and activity.
## The Problem Surge Solves
Surge was created to tackle a critical issue observed within the Cardano ecosystem: a **lack of on-chain activity** (low transaction and trade execution numbers) when compared to the chain's overall market capitalization and successful competing ecosystems.
* **Low Market Activity:** Leading networks like Solana and Ethereum routinely generate hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in daily on-chain activity, whereas Cardano has averaged roughly **$2 million per day**. This difference underscores the need for essential liquidity infrastructure.
* **Unequal Access:** Prior to Surge, developers possessed an inherent advantage in the financial landscape of blockchains because they knew how to interact with the node faster than retail users and could exploit opportunities via custom bots.
* **Missing Infrastructure:** The necessary tools to drive market efficiency and professional liquidity provision (which account for the majority of activity on other successful chains) have been missing from Cardano.
## Core Purpose and Mission
Surge’s fundamental mission is to accelerate Cardano’s adoption by creating efficient, liquid markets and democratizing sophisticated trading capabilities.
1. **Democratizing Financial Tools:** The platform levels the playing field by providing retail users with equal access to the types of advanced algorithmic strategies, like arbitrage, that were previously the domain of internal developer bots.
2. **Driving On-Chain KPIs:** By empowering any team or individual to provide professional market-making services, Surge expects to significantly boost key performance indicators (KPIs) like trading volume, trade execution efficiency, and active daily accounts, which are essential for global competitiveness and major exchange listings. Notably, the Surge testnet, in just four days, surpassed **100 million ADA in trading volume**, which was nearly a 700% increase over Cardano’s entire mainnet DEX activity at that time.
3. **Ensuring Market Health:** Surge enables community members to participate in activities that stabilize the ecosystem, such as **crowd-sourced arbitrage** to maintain the peg of stablecoins like DJED, USDA, and USDM. For projects, it allows for setting **resistance thresholds** to prevent massive price dumps without revealing their full capital reserves (or "war chest").
4. **Non-Custodial Security:** Surge ensures user sovereignty by operating in a non-custodial manner, meaning private keys or funds **never leave the user's machine**. All key management and transaction signing occur on the user's local device.
## Key Functionality and Architecture
Surge is built around a powerful **Trading Strategy Engine** designed for a wide spectrum of users, from non-technical individuals to institutional desks.
### 1. Strategy Creation and Automation
The platform allows users to define desired trade patterns and executes those strategies automatically. Strategy creation is offered through three modes:
* **Basic Mode:** An intuitive, GUI-driven interface for non-technical users to set up strategies based on volume, configurable spread percentages (e.g., 0.5% spread on ADA/STRIKE), time-based controls (e.g., 8 am–10 pm EST), and safety limits (e.g., max daily fee caps).
* **Pro Mode:** For power users, this includes advanced features like the **Advanced Signal Builder** (using Boolean logic with technical indicators like RSI and MACD). It also features a **Backtesting Engine** to verify strategy performance against historical data, and **Multi-Venue Support** to route trades simultaneously across different decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Minswap, SundaeSwap, Splash and more.
* **AI Mode:** An advanced layer utilizing natural language processing (integrating models like GPT-5 or Claude-3). Users can simply **describe the strategy they want in words** (e.g., "provide steady liquidity in ADA/SNEK with 2% spreads, avoid trading if volatility exceeds 5% per hour") and the AI converts that input into executable strategy logic. The AI agents can also continuously learn and dynamically adjust spreads and volumes.
### 2. Wallet and Capital Management
Surge uses an advanced non-custodial architecture to manage capital efficiently and securely:
* **Multi-Wallet Generation and Sharding:** Users can generate and manage **hundreds of Cardano wallets** instantly from a single connected dApp wallet. This process is crucial for obscuring execution trails, improving capital efficiency, increasing trade execution frequency, and enhancing privacy.
* **Automated Funding:** Users can fund multiple generated wallets in a single, seamless transaction, and Surge’s **auto-balancing features** ensure capital is properly distributed for continuous operation.
* **Non-Smart Contract Based:** The protocol is wallet-based rather than reliant on smart contracts, which avoids high fee overhead associated with arbitration and market-making activities.
### 3. Strategy Types and Capabilities
Surge enables the execution of sophisticated strategies previously difficult to deploy on Cardano:
* **Arbitrage:** Facilitating **cross-DEX arbitrage opportunities** to capitalize on mispricings between different exchanges and pools.
* **Guaranteed Profit Strategies:** The platform is designed to allow users to set conditions to **only execute transactions if they are guaranteed to be profitable**.
* **Peg Stabilization:** Users (including stablecoin providers) can deploy bots for continuous peg defense or exploiting short-term stablecoin price deviations, which contributes to the stability of the Cardano DeFi ecosystem.
* **Risk Management:** The platform includes **advanced analytics** and risk controls, such as maximum drawdown limits, slippage tolerance, and real-time monitoring of strategy health scores, ensuring a full audit trail.
## Ecosystem and Partnerships
Surge is built to integrate deeply within the Cardano ecosystem:
* **Technical Integration:** The platform has begun integration with Cardano's top DEXs and aggregators, including **Minswap, SundaeSwap, Splash, and DexHunter**. The initial testnet focused on supporting strategies on **MinSwap pools** for ADA pairs.
* **Layer 2 Partnership:** Surge has secured a technical partnership with **Midgard**, Cardano’s leading Layer 2 scaling solution, and plans to implement Surge upon Midgard’s launch, anticipating a synergy between high-frequency trading and Layer 2 infrastructure.
* **Audit and Security:** The platform’s code and security are undergoing a full audit by **Anastasia Labs**, confirming its non-custodial nature.
# Trading Strategy Engine
A Comprehensive Technical Guide
## 1. Introduction to the Surge Trading Strategy Engine
The Surge Trading Strategy Engine is a non-custodial, permissionless trade automation platform engineered to deliver professional-grade automated trading and market-making tools to the Cardano blockchain. Its core purpose is to democratize access to this sophisticated infrastructure, leveling the playing field between developers and retail users. By empowering any project, team, or individual to deploy advanced strategies that were once the exclusive domain of trading firms and institutional developers, Surge aims to significantly increase on-chain liquidity and activity across the ecosystem. This guide provides a technical and exhaustive breakdown of the engine's architecture, features, and operational modes for technical users, developers, and professional traders.
A foundational problem the Surge engine addresses is the disparity between Cardano's significant market capitalization and its comparatively low on-chain trading activity. The platform is engineered to solve this by providing accessible, powerful tools that allow users to easily configure and deploy automated strategies. This removes the need for manual execution and complex custom development, thereby fostering a more liquid, efficient, and active decentralized finance (DeFi) market on Cardano.
The engine's capabilities are built upon a secure, non-custodial architecture that prioritizes user sovereignty and capital efficiency.
## 2. Core Architecture and Execution Flow
The strategic foundation of the Surge engine is its non-custodial, wallet-based architecture. This design is a deliberate choice to prioritize user security, privacy, and operational efficiency. By ensuring that all private keys and funds remain on the user's local machine, the platform eliminates counterparty risk. Furthermore, by avoiding smart contract-based execution for core trading operations, it minimizes transaction overhead and fee complexity, a critical factor for high-frequency strategies where profit margins are thin.
The journey of a trading strategy, from conception to on-chain execution, follows a clear and logical pipeline designed for automation, scalability, and precise control.
`User Inputs/AI Prompt -> Strategy Builder -> Wallet Generator -> Wallet Balancer -> Trade Dispatcher -> DEX Pool(s) -> Execution Logs -> Analytics Engine`
* User Inputs/AI Prompt: The user defines a strategy using GUI-based controls or a natural language instruction.
* Strategy Builder: The engine translates the user's inputs into a set of executable trading logic and parameters.
* Wallet Generator: The platform locally generates a cluster of new wallets to distribute trading activity.
* Wallet Balancer: Funds from a single admin wallet are automatically distributed across the generated wallet cluster.
* Trade Dispatcher: The engine schedules and executes individual trades according to the strategy's logic.
* DEX Pool(s): Trades are submitted to integrated Decentralized Exchange (DEX) liquidity pools.
* Execution Logs: An immutable, hash-linked record of every transaction is created for auditing and analysis.
* Analytics Engine: Performance data from the execution logs is processed and visualized on the user's dashboard.
This architecture provides the foundation for the three distinct modes available for creating and deploying these strategies.
## 3. Strategy Creation Modes
The Surge engine is designed to accommodate a diverse user base, from novice traders to institutional desks, through three distinct strategy creation modes: Basic, Pro, and AI. Each mode offers a progressively sophisticated set of tools tailored to specific user needs and technical expertise. This section deconstructs the features and target users for each mode.
### **3.1. Basic Mode: Simplified Automation**
Basic Mode provides a simplified, GUI-driven interface designed for new or non-technical traders seeking to automate simple yet effective trading operations. It abstracts away complex configurations, allowing users to focus on high-level goals.
* Volume-based Configuration: Users can define specific daily trading volume targets (e.g., $100k in daily ADA volume), and the engine algorithmically determines trade frequency and size to meet the specified volume target.
* Spread Trading: This feature enables constant bid/ask provisioning, allowing a user to provide continuous liquidity to a trading pair at a configurable spread percentage, effectively mimicking a traditional order book.
* Time-based Controls: Users can define specific trading sessions (e.g., 8am–10pm EST) or create blackout periods to avoid executing trades during anticipated periods of high volatility or low liquidity.
* Safety Limits: The platform includes built-in guardrails, such as per-strategy fee caps to control daily costs and balance drawdown thresholds that automatically halt a strategy if losses exceed a predefined percentage.
### **3.2. Pro Mode: Granular Customization for Power Users**
Pro Mode is the engine's advanced interface for quantitative traders and power users who require granular control, granting them the same signal-building power previously exclusive to custom-coded bots. It unlocks institutional-grade tools for creating sophisticated, data-driven trading systems.
* Advanced Signal Builder: Users can construct complex trading triggers using Boolean logic (e.g., `IF RSI < 30 AND MACD > 0 THEN BUY`). These signals can combine technical indicators with on-chain oracles, such as stablecoin pegs and more.
* Multi-Venue Support: Strategies can be configured to route trades across multiple Cardano DEXs, including Minswap, SundaeSwap, Splash, and DexHunter, enabling cross-venue arbitrage and optimized execution based on liquidity depth and fees.
* Advanced Risk Management: This mode integrates sophisticated risk models, including Kelly Criterion-based position sizing to optimize capital allocation and strict slippage tolerance enforcement to prevent costly trade executions.
* Backtesting Engine: A crucial tool for strategy validation, the backtesting engine allows users to run their custom strategies against historical Cardano transaction data to verify performance and refine parameters before live deployment.
* Custom Templates: Complex strategies can be saved, exported, and shared as templates, allowing teams to standardize and reuse proven trading models.
### **3.3. AI Mode: Natural Language Strategy Creation**
AI Mode represents an innovative automation layer that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT and Claude to translate natural language commands into executable trading logic. This breakthrough lowers the barrier to entry for creating complex strategies, including those designed to be "guaranteed to be profitable," such as risk-free arbitrage, which were previously impossible for non-coders to implement.
* Natural Language Strategy Creation: Users can describe their trading objectives in plain English. For example: *“I want to provide steady liquidity in ADA/SNEK with 2% spreads, avoid trading if volatility exceeds 5% per hour, and allocate 20% of my balance to arbitrage opportunities.”*
* AI-Optimized Templates: The platform will include a library of pre-built, AI-enhanced strategies for common objectives like cross-DEX arbitrage, stablecoin peg stabilization, and trend-following.
* Risk Level Adaptation: Users can select from predefined risk profiles—"Conservative," "Moderate," or "Aggressive"—which allows the AI agent to tailor its execution parameters to match the user's risk appetite.
* Continuous Learning: AI agents are designed to dynamically adjust parameters, such as widening spreads during high volatility or tightening them in calm markets, based on real-time market conditions.
The execution of all strategies, regardless of creation mode, is managed by the platform's robust wallet management system.
## 4. Advanced Wallet Management and Security
A core architectural pillar of the Surge platform is its multi-wallet system, a technique known as "wallet sharding." This non-custodial approach is strategically designed to provide two critical advantages for professional traders: it obfuscates institutional-level trading activity and mitigates the risk of front-running. By distributing funds and trade executions across hundreds or even thousands of locally generated wallets, the system makes it difficult to trace a strategy's overall size and intent from on-chain data alone. This is essential for use cases like stablecoin peg defense, where a project must support its token's price without revealing the size of its "war chest" or "firing power" to the market.
The distribution of capital from a single user-controlled admin wallet to a cluster of sub-wallets follows a clear hierarchical model:
`[Admin Wallet] ↓ (Fund Distribution) [Wallet Cluster A] [Wallet Cluster B] ... [Wallet Cluster N] ↓ ↓ ↓ [DEX Trading] [DEX Trading] [DEX Trading]`
Security is paramount in this architecture. The platform operates on a strictly non-custodial basis, meaning private keys and funds never leave the user's local machine. All transaction signing occurs client-side, ensuring that the Surge platform never has access to or custody of user assets. To validate this commitment to security, the platform has undergone a full audit by Anastasia Labs, a respected auditing firm within the Cardano ecosystem.
This non-custodial framework is paired with an institutional-grade analytics suite to provide traders with both security and performance insight.
## 5. Integrated Risk Management and Analytics
Any serious trading platform requires institutional-grade monitoring and risk controls to protect capital and quantify performance. Surge integrates layered safety features and comprehensive performance tracking capabilities, providing users with immutable, hash-linked execution logs and hierarchical, auto-stop triggers for capital preservation.
The platform's safety net is structured with a clear hierarchy of controls, ensuring that limits can be applied at granular and global levels.
`Strategy-Level Limits -> Wallet-Level Limits -> Global Platform Limits`
This layered approach allows a user to set a maximum trade size for a single strategy, a maximum drawdown for an individual wallet, and an aggregate loss threshold for the entire account, which can trigger a global auto-stop on all activity. To monitor the effectiveness of these strategies, the platform provides a detailed analytics dashboard.
| Metric/Tool | Description |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Net P\&L | Displays the net profit and loss of a strategy over a given period, accounting for fees and slippage. |
| ROI | Calculates the Return on Investment, providing a clear measure of a strategy's profitability relative to the capital deployed. |
| Sharpe and Sortino Ratios | Provides industry-standard metrics for risk-adjusted returns, helping users understand performance relative to volatility. |
| Maximum Drawdown | Tracks the largest peak-to-trough decline in portfolio value, offering a key indicator of downside risk. |
| Real-time Performance Alerts | Allows users to configure custom alerts (e.g., via SMS/email) that trigger if key thresholds, such as a drawdown limit, are breached. |
| Equity Curve Tracking | Offers interactive charts that visualize the growth or decay of account equity over time, allowing for detailed performance analysis. |
The Surge Trading Strategy Engine stands as a comprehensive, secure, and AI-enhanced tool designed to catalyze the next era of decentralized finance on Cardano.
# Strategies in Action (Use Cases)
Cardano has historically faced the challenge of lower on-chain activity when compared to other major blockchain ecosystems. A key factor in bridging this gap lies in democratizing access to professional-grade financial tools, effectively leveling the playing field between institutional developers and everyday retail users. By making sophisticated trading and liquidity management accessible, the entire ecosystem can unlock significant growth, fostering deeper markets and greater participation.
Surge emerges as a platform designed to address this very challenge. It provides a comprehensive framework for users to develop, test, and deploy a wide range of automated trading strategies directly on Cardano, enhanced by AI trading agents and natural language strategy creation. Crucially, Surge is a non-custodial platform where all activity runs locally on the user's machine. This design ensures that private keys and funds never leave the user's control, eliminating third-party risk.
This guide details a series of practical, deployable strategies available through such platforms, categorized for both everyday investors and advanced traders seeking to enhance market efficiency.
## 1. Strategies for the Everyday Investor: Smart Automation for All
Sophisticated trading is no longer the exclusive domain of financial institutions. Simple, automated strategies empower individual investors to manage risk, remove emotional decision-making from their process, and build portfolio value with consistency. These tools allow for a disciplined approach to navigating the volatility of digital asset markets, turning complex financial operations into accessible, set-and-forget automations.
The table below provides a high-level overview of foundational strategies that can be deployed to achieve specific financial goals under various market conditions.
| Strategy | Primary Goal | Ideal Market Condition |
| --------------------------- | ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------ |
| Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) | Mitigate volatility risk | Any, especially for long-term accumulation |
| Trailing Stop Loss | Protect unrealized profits | Trending or volatile uptrends |
| Take-Profit Orders | Secure gains at target prices | Markets reaching resistance levels |
| Grid Trading | Profit from price fluctuations | Ranging or oscillating markets |
Each of these strategies serves a distinct purpose, and a detailed breakdown of their mechanics and applications follows.
### 1.1. Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA)
Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) is the practice of investing a fixed amount of money into an asset at regular, predetermined intervals. Its core benefit is smoothing out market entry points over time. This systematic approach reduces the impact of short-term volatility and mitigates the risk of making emotionally driven decisions, such as buying into a market peak out of fear of missing out.
Example in Action: A user configures a bot to automatically buy a fixed amount of ADA with USDM every Monday at 10 AM, regardless of the current price, to steadily build their position over the long term.
*Strategic Insight for Cardano Users: On Cardano, this is an ideal strategy for accumulating core ecosystem assets like ADA or DJED using a stablecoin like USDM, turning market volatility into a long-term advantage.*
### 1.2. Trailing Stop Loss
A Trailing Stop Loss is a dynamic order designed to protect profits. It automatically triggers a sale if a token's price drops by a specific percentage from its most recent peak price recorded since the order was activated. Unlike a static stop-loss set at a fixed price, a trailing stop moves up with the asset's price. This allows an investor to lock in gains as the market rises while still providing a safety net against a sudden reversal.
Example in Action: A user sets a Trailing Stop Loss to automatically sell their token position if its price falls 10% from its highest recorded price since the order was set, thereby protecting accumulated profits.
*Strategic Insight for Cardano Users: This is particularly valuable for protecting gains from volatile Cardano Native Tokens (CNTs) during bull runs without prematurely exiting a position.*
### 1.3. Take-Profit Orders
A Take-Profit order is a pre-set instruction to automatically sell an asset once it reaches a specific price target. Its key advantage is enabling a disciplined approach to securing gains. By defining an exit point in advance, it removes the temptation to hold on for potentially higher but riskier returns, ensuring that profits are systematically locked in according to a predefined plan.
Example in Action: A user sets a Take-Profit order to automatically sell 25% of their holdings when a specific token hits their predefined price target, converting unrealized gains into stable assets.
### 1.4. Grid Trading
Grid Trading is a strategy that involves placing multiple, layered buy and sell orders at set price intervals both above and below the current market price, creating a "grid" of orders. The functional goal of this strategy is to systematically profit from natural price oscillations. As the price moves down, buy orders are triggered; as it moves up, sell orders are executed.
Example in Action: For a volatile asset, a user deploys a bot that places a series of buy orders at intervals below the current price and corresponding sell orders at intervals above it, capitalizing on each minor price swing.
*Strategic Insight for Cardano Users: An effective way to generate yield from pairs that trade within a predictable range, such as a stablecoin pair slightly off-peg, turning minor fluctuations into consistent profit.*
These foundational strategies provide a powerful toolkit for individual investors, but the same underlying technology can be used for far more complex and impactful operations.
## 2. Strategies for the Advanced Trader: Sophistication at Scale
Beyond simple automation, advanced tools powered by AI-driven engines enable traders to operate as sophisticated market participants who actively contribute to the health and efficiency of the entire DeFi ecosystem. Techniques like arbitrage and algorithmic market-making are not merely for profit generation; they are fundamental mechanisms that create deeper liquidity, tighter bid-ask spreads, and more stable, reliable markets on Cardano for all users.
The following strategies illustrate how advanced automation can be deployed to achieve institutional-grade outcomes on-chain.
### 2.1. Cross-DEX Arbitrage
Cross-DEX Arbitrage is the practice of capitalizing on price discrepancies for the same asset across different decentralized exchanges, such as Minswap, SundaeSwap, and WingRiders. This strategy has a dual impact: it generates profit for the trader while simultaneously performing a crucial market function. By buying an asset where it is cheaper and selling it where it is more expensive, arbitrageurs force prices to converge, resulting in a more efficient market.
When applied to stablecoins like USDM, this strategy becomes a powerful form of crowdsourced peg support. Traders are financially incentivized to execute trades that help maintain the stablecoin's price stability, contributing to the overall health of Cardano's DeFi ecosystem.
The operational flow of an arbitrage bot is systematic and rapid:
1. The bot continuously scans for price inefficiencies across integrated DEX pools (e.g., ADA/USDM on Minswap vs. WingRiders).
2. When a profitable spread is detected—accounting for fees and potential slippage—the bot automatically executes a buy order on the cheaper DEX and a corresponding sell order on the more expensive one in a single, coordinated action.
3. The profit from the price difference is logged, and the bot immediately resumes scanning for the next opportunity.
### 2.2. Institutional-Grade Market-Making
Institutional-grade market-making involves the active and continuous process of placing both buy (bid) and sell (ask) orders to tighten spreads and increase market depth. This mimics a traditional order book and is fundamentally different from the passive nature of simply providing liquidity to an Automated Market Maker (AMM) pool.
An institutional-grade market-making algorithm involves several key components:
* Spread Optimization: The algorithm dynamically adjusts the bid/ask spread based on real-time market volatility and trading volume.
* Inventory Risk Management: The system actively manages the balance of assets in a trading pair (e.g., DJED/ADA) to avoid over-exposure to one side.
* Execution Logic: Trades are routed efficiently across multiple venues to maintain a constant and competitive presence in the order book.
This capability offers significant strategic value for token and stablecoin projects. In addition to the crowdsourced peg support from arbitrageurs, projects can deploy their own market-making algorithms to programmatically defend their token's price. This allows them to create resistance thresholds to prevent sharp price dumps without revealing their full "war chest" by placing all buy orders on-chain at once.
### 2.3. Impermanent Loss Mitigation
Impermanent Loss (IL) is the difference in value between holding assets in an AMM liquidity pool versus simply holding them in a wallet. If the prices of the two assets diverge significantly, LPs can end up with less value than if they had never provided liquidity at all—an opportunity cost. An automated, condition-based mitigation strategy can be deployed to actively manage this risk.
The execution logic is straightforward:
1. Monitor: A bot continuously monitors the user's LP positions and key market indicators like volatility.
2. Trigger: If volatility spikes beyond a user-defined threshold—a strong predictor of potential high IL—the bot is triggered to automatically withdraw the liquidity from the pool.
3. Re-deposit: Once market conditions stabilize and volatility returns to a normal range, the bot automatically re-deposits the assets back into the liquidity pool, allowing the user to resume earning trading fees.
### 2.4. AI-Agentic Trading
AI-Agentic Trading represents the next frontier of automation, utilizing autonomous bots that execute complex strategies based on natural language instructions, market data, and real-time learning. By integrating with Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 and Claude-3, platforms like Surge can translate plain English commands into executable, on-chain logic.
This empowers users to deploy highly customized strategies without writing a single line of code. The AI engine interprets the user's intent and orchestrates a series of actions to achieve the desired outcome, continuously adapting to market conditions.
Example in Action: A user provides the following natural language command: *“I want to provide steady liquidity in ADA/SNEK with 2% spreads, avoid trading if volatility exceeds 5% per hour, and allocate 20% of my balance to arbitrage opportunities.”* The AI agent converts this into a multi-faceted strategy that actively manages liquidity, monitors volatility, and simultaneously seeks out arbitrage trades.
## 3. The Impact of Accessible, Automated Trading
The availability of non-custodial, automated, and AI-enhanced trading tools is a direct solution to Cardano's historical challenge of low on-chain activity. By placing institutional-grade capabilities into the hands of a broader audience, these platforms are a pivotal catalyst in the maturation of the Cardano DeFi ecosystem, fostering a more robust, efficient, and competitive on-chain environment. This democratization delivers tangible benefits to all participants.
* For Retail Investors: Provides access to sophisticated risk-management and portfolio-building tools that were once the exclusive preserve of professional trading firms.
* For Token Projects: Offers the ability to support token health, manage liquidity, and maintain price stability algorithmically, without relying on centralized third parties or revealing strategic reserves.
* For the Cardano Ecosystem: Directly drives crucial on-chain KPIs like trading volume and liquidity. This increased activity makes the entire network more competitive, efficient, and ultimately more attractive for broader global adoption.
Powered by platforms like Surge, these strategies equip the Cardano community with the advanced infrastructure needed to thrive in the next era of decentralized finance. This foundation is essential for the success of Cardano's future, including its Layer 2 ecosystem, which relies on high-frequency, competitive arbitrage markets to flourish.
# Architecture, Security, and Risk Management
An In-Depth Report on Architecture, Security, and Risk Management
This report provides a technical analysis of the Surge platform's three foundational pillars: its architectural design, its security model, and its risk management framework. The analysis will demonstrate how these elements are not distinct modules but a causally linked system, interconnected to create a non-custodial, user-centric trading automation environment on the Cardano blockchain.
## 1. The Non-Custodial Architectural Framework
To understand Surge's capabilities, we must first deconstruct its architecture, as this blueprint dictates the platform's security posture, scalability, and core functionality. This section examines Surge's unique wallet-based, non-smart contract architecture—a fundamental differentiator in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space that directly enables its advanced security and risk management features.
### 1.1. Core Philosophy: A Non-Custodial, Wallet-Based Protocol
The primary architectural decision for Surge was to build a non-custodial, wallet-based solution rather than a smart contract-based protocol. This choice directly addresses key challenges in DeFi, particularly related to transaction costs and user sovereignty. Phil DiSarro, founder of Anastasia Labs and an advisor to the project, articulated the rationale: avoiding smart contracts is "a nice thing because that would introduce overhead, fee overhead." This is not a trivial concern; for high-frequency strategies like arbitrage and market-making, where profit margins are thin, low fees are essential for profitability.
This non-custodial model is an architectural mandate: the platform never takes custody of user funds or private keys. **All critical operations, including key management and the signing of transactions, occur locally on the user's machine.** This client-side execution model is the bedrock of the platform’s security, guaranteeing that the user remains in sole and absolute control of their assets at all times.
### 1.2. The System Execution Pipeline
From user intent to on-chain execution, Surge employs a structured pipeline that translates high-level strategy goals into discrete, secure transactions. This process ensures clarity, auditability, and reliable performance.
1. User Input/AI Prompt: The process begins with the user defining their strategy, either through a graphical interface or a natural language prompt for an AI agent.
2. Strategy Builder & Wallet Generator: The platform's engine translates user input into executable logic and simultaneously generates the required number of new wallets for the strategy.
3. Wallet Balancer: This crucial step funds and rebalances the newly created wallets from the admin account, preparing them for strategy deployment.
4. Trade Dispatcher: This component schedules and routes trades, selecting wallets and timing transactions to execute on designated DEX pools to optimize for strategic goals.
5. Execution Logs & Analytics Engine: After a trade is dispatched, the result is recorded in an immutable log. This data feeds into the Analytics Engine, providing a complete, transparent audit trail for performance analysis.
### 1.3. Multi-Wallet Architecture for Privacy and Scale
The platform's use of "wallet sharding" is a key architectural differentiator that solves the dual problems of operational privacy and capital efficiency. Users can generate and manage hundreds of wallets from a single administrative wallet. The purpose of this design is twofold:
* Enhanced Privacy: By distributing funds and executing trades across a large cluster of wallets, the platform obscures the user's total capital and overall strategy, preventing on-chain observers from easily identifying the full scale of a user's operations.
* Capital Efficiency: Funds from the admin wallet are distributed across the sub-wallets in a single, seamless on-chain transaction. This allows for more granular and parallelized trading activity, improving the overall efficiency of deployed capital.
### 1.4. Future-Ready Modular Design
Surge’s architecture is engineered for extensibility, ensuring it can adapt to the evolving DeFi landscape. The platform's modular expansion path is built on several key components that facilitate future growth and integration.
* Multi-DEX Support: The architecture features a plug-in framework, allowing for the seamless integration of new trading venues and aggregators without altering the core engine.
* AI Integration Layer: The system is designed with a modular interface for plugging in different AI models, such as GPT and Claude, to power strategy generation and execution.
* External API Hooks: The design includes a framework for integrating with external data sources like price oracles or TradingView signals, as well as API-first integration for external use by funds or DAOs.
This forward-looking design ensures long-term viability, with its non-custodial architecture forming the secure foundation for all future capabilities and their security implications.
## 2. Multi-Layered Security and Privacy Model
In an ecosystem where security breaches are catastrophic, a robust security model is a necessity. Surge's non-custodial architecture serves as the direct foundation for its multi-layered security and privacy features. This section examines how this architectural choice enables a resilient environment that prioritizes user control, transaction safety, and operational discretion from the ground up.
### 2.1. The Cornerstone of Security: Client-Side Signing and User Control
The platform's primary security guarantee is that the user always maintains sole control of their private keys. This is an architectural mandate, not merely a policy. The technical implementation ensures that all signature verification happens client-side, directly on the user's device. At no point are private keys or signing credentials exposed to a remote API or stored on a server.
This model stands in stark contrast to custodial solutions or bots that require users to provide keys via configuration files. With those systems, as auditor Phil DiSarro notes, "you have no idea what's happening with this stuff," highlighting the black-box risk that Surge’s transparent, client-side model eliminates.
### 2.2. The Transaction Safety Net
To protect users from network instability and execution risks, Surge has integrated a sequential safety net that intercepts and manages every transaction. A transaction is first submitted to the Validation Engine for pre-execution checks. If valid, it proceeds to the Execution Layer. Should it fail due to network conditions, the Fallback/Retry Handler engages. Every step of this process is recorded by the Immutable Audit Log and monitored by the Real-time Alerting system, ensuring resilience and complete transparency.
| Mechanism | Function |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Validation Engine | Performs pre-execution checks for sufficient balance, slippage tolerance, and other compliance rules to prevent invalid transactions from being submitted. |
| Fallback/Retry Handler | In case of a failed transaction, this handler automatically retries with an exponential backoff or routes the trade to an alternate DEX pool. |
| Immutable Audit Log | Records every transaction attempt—including failures—in a hash-linked log, providing a complete and verifiable history for transparency and analysis. |
| Real-time Alerting | Delivers push notifications to the user in the event of potential security breaches, system anomalies, or other critical events. |
### 2.3. Privacy and Obfuscation by Design
The multi-wallet architecture is a core component of the platform's privacy model. By distributing activity across hundreds of wallets, a user's true "firing power" or total capital commitment is effectively obscured from on-chain observers. A legitimate, high-stakes use case illustrates this benefit: a stablecoin project needing to perform market operations to support its peg. If its full treasury size were public, it could be targeted. By using Surge, the project can deploy capital discreetly, executing its stabilization strategy without revealing its total capacity and thus creating an information advantage.
### 2.4. Independent Auditing and Verification
To validate its security claims, the Surge platform is undergoing a full, independent audit by Anastasia Labs. This rigorous process scrutinizes the codebase to ensure it adheres to best practices and fulfills its non-custodial promise. Phil DiSarro, serving as both an advisor and lead auditor, confirmed after reviewing the code that the platform "does not ever access your private keys or have custody of any funds." This third-party verification provides a critical layer of trust and assurance for all users. The synthesis of user-controlled keys, automated safety nets, and privacy-enhancing architecture enables a proactive approach to risk management.
## 3. Comprehensive Risk Management Framework
Surge's non-custodial architecture is a direct prerequisite for its hierarchical risk management framework. By ensuring user sovereignty at the foundational level, the platform can then layer granular, user-configurable controls and systemic backstops without introducing custodial risk. This creates a system where empowerment and safety are mutually reinforcing. This section details Surge's framework, which combines these user-level controls with robust, platform-wide safety protocols.
### 3.1. User-Configurable Risk Controls
The platform provides a suite of sophisticated tools that empower users to define and enforce the risk parameters of their specific strategies, aligning platform execution with personal risk tolerance.
| Control Type | Description | Example |
| ------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Safety Limits | Pre-set thresholds to automatically halt a strategy if certain conditions are met, preventing runaway losses or excessive fees. | Set a maximum daily fee cap of 500 ADA or a balance drawdown threshold that stops trading at a 10% loss. |
| Position Sizing | Advanced mathematical models to determine the optimal size for a trade based on risk and potential reward. | Utilize the Kelly Criterion-based model to automatically size positions. |
| Stop-Loss Triggers | Automated orders that execute a trade to exit a position once it reaches a specified loss threshold. | Configure a trailing stop-loss to sell an asset if its price drops 10% from its most recent peak. |
| Backtesting Engine | A simulation tool that allows users to test their strategy's performance against historical market data before deploying real capital. | Run a strategy against 90 days of historical ADA/SNEK data to verify its viability. |
| Health Score | A real-time metric that indicates the risk level of a strategy by calculating the ratio of a wallet's current balance to the intensity of its trading activity. | A "green" score indicates a safe balance-to-activity ratio, while "red" signals potential over-leverage. |
### 3.2. System-Wide Safety Protocols
Beyond individual strategy controls, Surge implements a hierarchical, multi-layered risk management system designed to protect the user from systemic risks. This model ensures that safeguards are in place at every level of operation.
1. Strategy-Level Limits (per trade): The most granular controls, applying risk parameters on a per-transaction basis (e.g., maximum trade size).
2. Wallet-Level Limits (per balance): This layer aggregates risk at the wallet level, enforcing rules based on the total balance of a single wallet (e.g., a wallet cannot lose more than 10% of its balance in 24 hours).
3. Global Platform Limits (per account): The highest level of protection, monitoring the user's entire account. It includes the Global Auto-Stop, an emergency feature that automatically halts all trading if the aggregated, platform-wide drawdown for a user's account exceeds a predefined critical threshold.
### 3.3. AI Agent Governance and Risk Mitigation
The integration of AI-driven trading introduces unique risks, requiring specialized controls. Surge has built a robust governance framework to manage these agents, ensuring human oversight is maintained even during autonomous operation.
* Human-in-the-Loop Approval: High-value or potentially high-risk trades proposed by an AI agent are automatically placed in an approval queue, requiring manual user verification.
* Hard-Coded Risk Budgets: Users can allocate a maximum daily loss or total capital deployment budget to each AI agent, ensuring no single agent can exceed its predefined financial boundaries.
* Global Kill Switch: An emergency function provides the user with the ability to instantly halt all active AI agents across the entire platform with a single command.
* Paper/Live Toggle: AI agents can be run in a "paper trade mode," executing strategies in a simulated environment without deploying real capital for safe testing and performance verification.
* Decision Transparency Logs: Every trade executed by an AI agent is accompanied by a "reasoning log," providing a plain-language explanation for its decision-making process.
These mechanisms are designed to solve the "principal-agent problem" in DeFi, ensuring that autonomous AI agents operate strictly within the bounds and risk tolerance defined by their human principal. Together, user-configurable and system-wide controls create a comprehensive safety net for sophisticated automated trading.
## 4. Conclusion
Surge's architecture, security, and risk management are not separate components but a deeply integrated system designed to empower users while safeguarding their assets. The platform's foundational decision to build a non-custodial, wallet-based architecture directly enables a multi-layered security model where client-side signing is paramount and privacy is an engineered feature. Layered on top is a comprehensive risk framework providing both granular user control and systemic, automated backstops. Ultimately, Surge's non-custodial, client-side execution model is not merely a feature but an uncompromising architectural mandate that delivers professional-grade trading tools with embedded enterprise-grade safeguards, establishing a new benchmark for operational integrity and user sovereignty on Cardano.
# SURGE Token: Utility & Tokenomics
## 1. Introduction to the SURGE Token
The SURGE token is the central value-capture and utility asset of the Surge protocol, a non-custodial market-making and trade automation platform on Cardano. Its design is fundamentally rooted in the core Cardano principles of decentralization, community ownership, and user sovereignty. This approach directly aligns the protocol's success with tangible benefits for its token holders, creating a symbiotic relationship between the platform's growth and the community's prosperity.
The token's core philosophy is built on three key pillars:
* Direct Value Accrual: The protocol is designed to return **100% of its generated revenue directly to SURGE token stakers,** ensuring that those who support the ecosystem are its primary beneficiaries.
* Utility-Driven Demand: The token is not merely a speculative asset; it is a key that unlocks enhanced platform features, creating intrinsic demand through its functional utility.
* Decentralized Ownership: SURGE empowers its holders with governance rights, placing the future direction of the protocol squarely in the hands of the community.
This document details the specific utility mechanisms and the carefully structured tokenomics that bring this vision to life.
## 2. Core Utility Mechanisms
The SURGE token's utility is designed to create a self-reinforcing cycle where platform usage generates direct value for token holders, which in turn encourages deeper engagement with and support for the protocol. The following mechanisms form the foundation of the token's value proposition.
### **2.1. 100% Protocol Revenue Sharing**
The Surge protocol implements a simple yet powerful revenue-sharing model that captures value from platform activity and distributes it directly to the community. Surge applies a 0.1% fee on every transaction executed through its automated strategies, with all fees collected in ADA.
In a direct commitment to its community-centric ethos, 100% of this collected revenue is distributed to SURGE token holders who stake their tokens in the Surge staking portal. This creates a direct yield mechanism where the rewards for stakers grow in proportion to the platform's trading volume.
Note: For context, a trading volume of 100 million ADA would generate 100,000 ADA in dividends for stakers.
### **2.2. Tiered Platform Access**
Staking SURGE tokens is required to unlock deeper access and enhanced features within the platform, creating intrinsic demand tied directly to the token's utility. As users scale their operations, they are incentivized to stake more SURGE to access higher tiers, which offer increased wallet limits, fee reductions, and APY bonuses. This tiered system ensures that the most active and committed users receive the greatest benefits.
SURGE Staking Tiers & Benefits
| Tier | SURGE Staked (TBD) | Wallet Limit | Fee Discount | APY Bonus | Revenue Share Boost | Support Access |
| -------- | ------------------ | ------------ | ------------ | --------- | ------------------- | -------------- |
| Free | 0 | 10 | 0% | 0% | 0% | Email only |
| Bronze | 1k | 50 | 10% | 1% | +2% | Priority email |
| Silver | 5k | 150 | 20% | 2% | +5% | Chat support |
| Gold | 25k | 300 | 35% | 3% | +10% | Dedicated rep |
| Platinum | 100k | 500 | 50% | 5% | +20% | 24/7 hotline |
### **2.3. Decentralized Governance**
SURGE holders are empowered to participate directly in the protocol's governance, collectively shaping its future development and strategic direction. By holding and staking SURGE, community members gain the right to vote on critical decisions, ensuring the platform evolves in alignment with the interests of its users.
Key areas of governance influenced by token holders include:
* New feature implementations and roadmap priorities
* Changes to the protocol's fee structures
* Pursuit of Centralized Exchange (CEX) listings
* Deployment of the DAO treasury funds for ecosystem growth and initiatives
This governance framework is the mechanism that fulfills the protocol's core promise of "community ownership" and "user sovereignty," transforming token holders from passive users into active stakeholders. The subsequent breakdown details the economic structure that underpins this model.
## 3. SURGE Tokenomics
The economic design of the SURGE token is engineered for long-term sustainability and community alignment. It features a fixed, non-inflationary total supply, a large public allocation to ensure broad distribution, and a vesting schedule that prioritizes the protocol's health over short-term interests.
**Total Supply: 25,000,000 SURGE**
### **3.1. Token Distribution**
The token allocation model is designed to be fair and transparent, with the vast majority of tokens distributed to the public, liquidity providers, and the community-controlled DAO.
| Allocation | Percentage of Total Supply |
| ----------------- | -------------------------- |
| Public Sale | 67% |
| Team and Advisors | 14% |
| Liquidity | 12% |
| DAO | 7% |
### **3.2. Supply Schedule & Vesting**
The token release schedule is structured to ensure high initial liquidity while promoting long-term stability. A significant 79% of the total supply will be circulating at the Token Generation Event (TGE), comprising the public sale and initial liquidity allocations.
* Team and Advisors (14%): This allocation is subject to a 24-month vesting schedule. It includes a 6-month cliff where no tokens are released, followed by 18 months of linear vesting with monthly unlocks. This structure aligns the team's incentives with the long-term success of the protocol.
* DAO (7%): The vesting and deployment of the DAO treasury allocation will be determined entirely by SURGE holder governance. This allows the community to decide how to best allocate these resources for initiatives, development, or incentives.
* No Emissions: The SURGE token has a fixed supply with zero emissions, preventing inflationary pressure and ensuring the token's value is derived solely from protocol revenue and utility.
Ultimately, the tokenomics of SURGE are designed to circumvent common pitfalls of inflationary models, empowering the community by ensuring the token's value is directly tied to platform performance and utility.
# Quick-Start Guide
1. Connect a Cardano wallet that supports smart contracts (Eternl wallet is Recommended on desktop).
2. **(Optional)** To begin market making, select a pair from the drop down on the header and click **Fund** to deposit tokens.
3. Deposit ADA and at least an equal value of your token. For daily volume, target a 1:4 ratio of ADA to desired volume. Since trades are ADA-based, you can precisely control spend and track costs. Add as much of your token as possible - if its price rises while running, your token balance will drop, which may affect strategy performance.
4. Go to the wallet page, click **Generate Wallets**, and enter the number you want. We suggest 1 wallet per 1,000 ADA of target volume.
5. Navigate to the "Strategies" page. Click "Create Strategy" and enter the amount of Buys/Sells you would like your bot to execute daily.
6. Track your total volume and bot performance in the Dashboard tab
7. Add more liquidity, remove liquidity, create and delete new bots at anytime
# Account Set-Up
Comming soon
# Funding
Deposit ADA along with an equivalent value of the token you are market making for. For daily volume targets, we recommend a minimum **one to four ratio** of ADA to target daily volume. Always add as much of the token as possible. All trades are calculated based on ADA amounts so you can precisely control your ADA expenditure and track costs. The paired token is treated as an abundant asset, which means if it increases in value while a bot is running your token balance may decrease and affect performance.
We recommend funding your account with both **tADA** and **tCNT** so you can run strategies smoothly.
A popup will appear asking which wallet you would like to fund. We recommend selecting the **Treasury Wallet**. The system is designed to automatically fund from the Treasury Wallet so you will not need to worry about managing individual wallets manually.
Deposit ADA along with an equivalent value of the token you are market making for. For daily volume targets, we recommend a minimum **one to four ratio** of ADA to target daily volume. Always add as much of the token as possible. All trades are calculated based on ADA amounts so you can precisely control your ADA expenditure and track costs. The paired token is treated as an abundant asset, which means if it increases in value while a bot is running your token balance may decrease and affect performance.
We recommend funding your account with both **tADA** and **tCNT** so you can run strategies smoothly.
A popup will appear asking which wallet you would like to fund. We recommend selecting the **Treasury Wallet**. The system is designed to automatically fund from the Treasury Wallet so you will not need to worry about managing individual wallets manually.
After selecting the wallet, you can choose to fund it either through a **deposit address** or directly from your **connected wallet**.
If funding through your connected wallet:
1. Choose the asset you want to deposit (tADA and tCNT).\
\&#xNAN;*\[Image of asset dropdown]*
2. Press the **Add** button next to each asset.\
\&#xNAN;*\[Image of Add button in popup]*
3. Enter the amount you want to deposit.\
\&#xNAN;*\[Image of inputs filled out]*
4. Select **Fund Account** and sign the transaction with your connected wallet.\
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# Building Strategies
# Practical Examples
#### Practical Examples
1. **Simple Range Market Making**\
• Select ADA/MIN as your pair.\
• Place buys every 1% below the current market and sells every 1% above.\
• Surge automatically cycles through these trades as price moves.\
• Earn fees and capture volatility without picking a direction.
2. **Grid Trading Bot**\
• Configure a grid of buy/sell orders across a wide price band (e.g., $0.35–$0.55 ADA).\
• As ADA fluctuates, Surge executes trades at each grid level.\
• Profits accumulate from repeated swing cycles.\
• Great for sideways markets with frequent oscillations.
3. **DCA Accumulation Strategy**\
• Set Surge to buy ADA with MIN in fixed increments every 4 hours.\
• The bot executes consistently, averaging your entry price over time.\
• Works for accumulation of long-term tokens without needing to time the market.
4. **Automated Sell Ladder**\
• Upload a CSV or configure manually: sell 10% of holdings at $0.45, $0.50, $0.55, etc.\
• Surge runs in the background and executes as targets are hit.\
• Locks in profits automatically during rallies.
5. **Arbitrage Across Pairs**\
• Detect that SNEK/ADA is mispriced compared to SNEK/USDM.\
• Surge bot borrows ADA, converts into SNEK, then sells SNEK into USDM.\
• Net profit comes from the pricing gap, with automated execution closing the loop.
6. **Stop-Loss with Trailing Take-Profit**\
• Buy ADA at $0.40 and set Surge to sell at $0.46.\
• Add a trailing stop so if ADA keeps climbing, the bot follows the price up and only sells once momentum slows.\
• Protects downside while maximizing upside.
7. **Liquidity Cycling Strategy**\
• Configure the bot to alternate between ADA and USDM based on price bands.\
• Example: buy ADA when under $0.38, sell back into USDM when over $0.44.\
• Over time this compounds profits while keeping exposure balanced.
8. **Auto-Market Maker with Rebates**\
• Run a high-frequency market-making bot on ADA/USDM.\
• Tight spreads generate constant micro-fees.\
• The more volume your bot contributes, the more Surge rebates you earn — turning activity itself into revenue.
# Fee Structure
# Security and Audits
# Token Policy ID
**$SURGE Token ID:** e992ef75f2367e6ecd93716ae88eba0d005dd91fd3a21f650b6496b5
# Allocation, Utility, Governance, and Staking Mechanics
## 1. Introduction to the SURGE Token Model
While the Cardano blockchain possesses one of the industry's strongest technical and ideological foundations, it has historically underperformed in a critical area: on-chain liquidity and activity. Compared to ecosystems like Solana and Ethereum, which routinely see daily trading volumes in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, Cardano's figures have been orders of magnitude lower. Surge a non-custodial, automated trading platform, is engineered to address this gap by delivering professional-grade market-making infrastructure to the entire ecosystem. This document provides a detailed analysis of the SURGE token's mechanics, distribution, and the strategic rationale behind its design.
The core principles of the SURGE tokenomics model are designed for direct value accrual to token holders, the decentralization of protocol ownership, and strategic alignment with proven models from the Cardano ecosystem. By closely mirroring the structure of successful launches like STRIKE, the model prioritizes a large public allocation and a high initial circulating supply to build a strong, community-driven foundation from its inception.
This analysis will now delve into the specific functions that underpin the token's value proposition.
## 2. Core Token Utility and Value Accrual
The strategic importance of a token's utility cannot be overstated, as it creates intrinsic demand and a clear reason for participants to acquire and hold the asset. The value of the SURGE token is directly linked to three core mechanisms designed to reward holders, grant access to platform features, and empower community governance over the protocol's future.
### **2.1. 100% Revenue Sharing**
The primary value accrual mechanism for SURGE is a direct share of the platform's success. The protocol applies a 0.1% fee on every transaction, which is collected in ADA. 100% of this revenue is then distributed directly to SURGE token holders who stake their tokens. These rewards are paid out in ADA, providing a tangible, non-inflationary yield in one of the ecosystem's primary assets and creating a direct link between platform trading volume and holder returns.
For context, 100 million ADA in trading volume would generate 100,000 ADA for stakers.
### **2.2. Tiered Platform Access**
Staking SURGE unlocks progressively greater access and enhanced benefits on the Surge platform. This tiered system incentivizes holding by providing stakers with tangible competitive advantages, including significant fee reductions and expanded operational capabilities. This utility ensures the token is not just a passive investment but an active key to unlocking the platform's full potential.
| Tier | Minimum SURGE Staked | Fee Reduction | Key Platform Benefits |
| ---- | -------------------- | ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| 1 | Low | Standard | Access to core trading tools |
| 2 | Medium | Reduced trading fees | Unlocks advanced strategies |
| 3 | High | Even lower trading fees | Higher daily volume limits |
| 4 | Very High | Best available fees | Priority access to new features and AI tools |
### **2.3. Decentralized Governance**
SURGE holders are empowered to shape the future of the protocol through a decentralized governance framework. Staking the token grants voting rights on critical decisions, ensuring that the platform evolves in alignment with its community's interests. Key areas subject to holder governance include:
* New feature implementations and roadmap prioritization
* Changes to the protocol's fee structures
* Pursuit of Centralized Exchange (CEX) listings
* Deployment and allocation of the DAO treasury funds
These three pillars of utility ensure the SURGE token is deeply integrated into the platform's operational and strategic layers, moving from its functional utility to the specifics of its supply and allocation.
## 3. Token Supply and Distribution
A transparent and equitable token distribution is fundamental to building community trust and ensuring the long-term viability of a decentralized protocol. The SURGE token distribution has been structured to prioritize community ownership and minimize future inflationary pressures.
The Fixed Total Supply of the token is 25,000,000 SURGE. This supply is capped, and there are no plans for future emissions, ensuring that the token's value is not diluted over time by an expanding supply.
The complete allocation of the total supply is as follows:
| Category | Allocation | Token Amount |
| ----------------- | ---------- | ------------ |
| Public Sale | 67% | 16,750,000 |
| Team and Advisors | 14% | 3,500,000 |
| Liquidity | 12% | 3,000,000 |
| DAO | 7% | 1,750,000 |
The Initial Circulating Supply at the Token Generation Event (TGE) will be 79% of the total supply, equivalent to 19,750,000 SURGE. This initial float is composed of the Public Sale allocation (67%) and the tokens designated for initial exchange liquidity (12%).
This distribution model sets the stage for a transparent release schedule, which is critical for market stability.
## 4. Vesting and Release Schedule
Vesting schedules are a critical component of tokenomics, designed to align long-term incentives between the core team and the community while managing the release of tokens into the market in a predictable manner.
### **Team and Advisor Vesting**
The allocation for the team and advisors is subject to a strict vesting schedule to ensure long-term commitment to the project's success. The schedule begins with a 6-month cliff, during which no tokens are unlocked. Following this cliff, the tokens are released through linear monthly unlocks over the subsequent 18 months, culminating in a total 24-month vesting period.
### **DAO Treasury**
The 7% allocation for the DAO treasury does not have a predetermined vesting schedule. Instead, its future use, including any potential vesting, lock-up periods, or distribution mechanisms for grants and incentives, will be decided entirely by SURGE holders through the decentralized governance process. This gives the community direct control over a significant portion of the token supply for future growth initiatives.
The deliberate structure of these tokenomics is rooted in a strategic decision to adopt a proven and successful model.
## 5. Strategic Rationale: The STRIKE-Inspired Model
There is a significant strategic advantage in modeling a new token launch on previously successful projects, particularly within the same blockchain ecosystem, as it provides a validated framework for achieving community trust and market stability. The SURGE tokenomics are explicitly and closely modeled after STRIKE, which is cited as one of the most successful token launches in the history of the Cardano ecosystem.
The key characteristics adopted from this model and their strategic impact are outlined below:
* Large Public Allocation (67%): By allocating a substantial majority of the tokens to the public, the model fosters a wide and decentralized distribution from day one. This high degree of community ownership empowers users and reduces the risk of centralized control.
* High Initial Circulating Supply (79%): Launching with a large portion of the supply already in circulation minimizes future inflationary pressure from large, scheduled token unlocks. This approach provides greater certainty to the market and reduces the potential for sell-offs that can depress token value.
* Zero Emissions: The fixed total supply is a core feature that prevents long-term value dilution. Unlike models that continuously emit new tokens for rewards, SURGE's value is protected from inflation, making it a more predictable asset.
* 100% Revenue Sharing in ADA: Distributing all protocol fees directly to stakers in the form of ADA creates a direct and tangible value proposition. This mechanism ties the yield for SURGE holders directly to the platform's success, rewarding them with a liquid, primary ecosystem asset rather than the native token itself.
This strategic foundation provides a clear and compelling economic case for the SURGE token.
## 6. Conclusion
The SURGE tokenomics model presents a well-defined framework designed for sustainability, community empowerment, and direct value return. Through its 100% revenue-sharing model, tiered platform access, and decentralized governance, the token is deeply integrated into the Surge protocol's core functions. Its distribution strategy, inspired by the successful STRIKE model, prioritizes a large public allocation and a high initial circulating supply to foster a decentralized and stable market environment from the outset.
For potential investors and platform users, the analysis distills into three critical takeaways:
1. Direct Value Accrual: The model's cornerstone is a dual-benefit system for stakers. The 100% revenue-sharing mechanism provides a direct, tangible yield in ADA tied to protocol usage, while the tiered access structure offers significant cost savings through platform fee reductions.
2. Community-Centric Distribution: With 67% of tokens allocated to the public sale and 79% circulating at launch, the structure is designed to empower the community, decentralize ownership, and mitigate the risk of future sell pressure from large team or treasury unlocks.
3. Aligned Incentives: The team's 24-month vesting schedule, which includes a 6-month cliff, demonstrates a clear, long-term commitment to the protocol's growth and ensures that the core contributors' interests are aligned with those of the broader community.
# Staking and Revenue Sharing
## 1. The Core Revenue Model: Aligning Protocol Success with User Rewards
In the competitive landscape of decentralized finance (DeFi), a transparent and user-centric revenue model is a strategic cornerstone for fostering long-term protocol health and decentralization. By directly linking the platform's success to the financial rewards of its community, a protocol can create a powerful alignment of interests. Surge Protocol has built its tokenomics on this principle, establishing a clear and direct mechanism for value distribution.
The foundational principle of Surge's revenue model is its commitment to returning all generated value directly to the token holders who support the network. This is not a partial distribution or a complex treasury-managed system; instead, it is a direct pass-through of all platform earnings.
**"100% of protocol revenue goes directly to SURGE stakers in the form of ADA."**
This protocol revenue is generated from a simple, transparent fee structure. Surge applies a `0.1% fee` on every transaction executed through the platform. These fees are collected from the trading volume and subsequently distributed to stakers in ADA, the native asset of the Cardano blockchain. This model is critically important for two reasons: first, it provides a stable and immediately usable reward in a major, liquid asset, rather than the protocol's often more volatile native token. Second, it avoids the inflationary sell pressure that plagues many DeFi reward models, thereby protecting the intrinsic value of the SURGE token itself.
To illustrate the model's potential, for every 100 million ADA in trading volume processed by the platform, the protocol generates 100,000 ADA in fees. This entire amount is then distributed among the community of SURGE stakers, providing a tangible metric for users to gauge the value being generated. While this direct revenue stream establishes the token's foundational value, the tiered staking system provides the mechanism for users to unlock and amplify these rewards.
## 2. The SURGE Staking Tiers: Unlocking Platform Benefits
A tiered staking system serves as a strategic mechanism to reward deeper commitment and align the interests of the most dedicated users with the protocol's long-term growth. By offering progressively valuable benefits, such a system incentivizes accumulation and sustained participation. Surge implements this model to create a clear pathway for users to enhance their platform experience and financial returns.
Staking the `SURGE` token is the key that unlocks this tiered system. The amount of `SURGE` a user stakes determines their access to enhanced revenue sharing, reduced trading fees, and more advanced platform capabilities. This creates a direct correlation between a user's staked commitment and the value they receive, as outlined in the four-tier structure below:
| Tier | Minimum SURGE Staked | Key Benefits | Platform Access |
| ------ | -------------------- | ----------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| Tier 1 | Low | Standard | Core trading tools |
| Tier 2 | Medium | Reduced trading fees | Unlock advanced strategies |
| Tier 3 | High | Even lower trading fees | Higher volume limits |
| Tier 4 | Very High | Best available fees | Priority access to new features |
The structure is intelligently designed to cater to a spectrum of users. Tier 1 provides a low-cost entry for casual traders to begin earning, while Tiers 3 and 4 offer significant fee reductions and higher limits; benefits that directly appeal to high-frequency traders and institutional players whose profitability hinges on minimizing operational costs. This creates a clear value ladder, encouraging deeper capital commitment and solidifying the token's role as a core component of the platform experience.
## 3. Synthesizing the Value Proposition for Stakers
The combination of a direct, 100% revenue-sharing model and a multi-tiered utility system forms the foundation of the `SURGE` token's compelling value proposition. This dual approach ensures that holding and staking the token provides both direct financial returns and enhanced functional benefits within the Surge ecosystem.
The primary benefits for a SURGE token staker can be distilled into three core advantages:
* Sustainable Real Yield in a Blue-Chip Asset: Stakers earn a direct share of protocol revenue paid in ADA. This creates a sustainable yield sourced from real economic activity, not inflationary token emissions, insulating holders from the sell pressure that plagues many DeFi reward models.
* Direct Economic Advantages for Active Traders: Staking is not passive; it unlocks tangible competitive edges. Progressively steep fee reductions, access to advanced strategies, and higher volume limits directly translate to improved trading profitability and capital efficiency for the protocol's most active users.
* Incentivized Long-Term Participation: The tiered system creates a clear and rewarding path for users to deepen their engagement with the protocol. This structure encourages the accumulation and long-term staking of `SURGE`, fostering a committed community whose interests are fundamentally aligned with the platform's success.
Ultimately, this comprehensive model creates a powerful, symbiotic relationship and a virtuous cycle: staking reduces trading fees, which incentivizes more on-platform volume. Increased volume generates more protocol revenue, which is distributed back to stakers in ADA, further increasing the value and incentive to stake. This self-reinforcing loop ensures that the growth of the Surge platform directly translates into greater financial rewards and enhanced capabilities for its dedicated community.
# Mainnet Tutorial
### Welcome to Surge!
Surge is a non-custodial, user friendly trade automation platform built for the Cardano blockchain. The protocol reflects Cardano’s values of decentralization and user sovereignty by making locally-run algorithmic trading power accessible by all Cardano users.
We hope to help as many teams and individuals get familiar with using Surge, as we believe driving growth in on-chain volume and transactions using the Surge protocol can be a positive factor in Cardano adoption.
The Surge platform gives anyone the chance to automate strategies. Feedback is appreciated and can be sent in the Feedback channel of the Surge Discord:
#### ***What you'll see in Surge Mainnet:***
**Dashboard:**
* Monitor your automated trading performance and portfolio
**Wallet/Fund Management:**
* Create multiple Cardano trading wallets and store their keys locally
* Manage individual wallets, including manual asset sending and trading pair association for each
**Strategies**
* Configure, run, and view multiple trading strategies
## Connecting to Surge dApp
1. Connect your wallet in the Surge dApp here:
1. Click **Grant Access** so the dApp can read your wallet balances and allow you to interact with the dApp.
Your dashboard will load up with information pertaining to your Surge strategy execution:
All figures will initially be at 0. Let's change that.
⚠️ Note: Surge is only avaible on desktop.
## Creating Wallets
At the top of the page, select the trading pair you would like to use. For this tutorial, choose **ADA/SURGE.** Once a pair is selected, your dashboard, wallets, and trading strategies will all be tied to that pair.
In the future, users will be able to run strategies across multiple pairs, with each pair having its own dedicated strategies and wallets managed through the pair selector.
Next, navigate to the **Wallets** page.
The Wallets page shows all wallets linked to your account and selected pair. Since you are just starting, there will be none created.
Click **Generate** to begin creating wallets.
⚠️ Note: Ensure the ADA/SURGE or pair you are going to use is selected in the top right of the app before generating wallets. If this is not done wallets will have to be tagged with the pair individually.
A popup will appear where you can generate up to **500 wallets**. We recommend starting with **5-20 wallets**. After selecting the number of wallets you want, press **Generate x Wallets**.
Surge will then create the number wallets you specified, and they will appear in your Wallets list.
💡 **Tip:** You can always generate more wallets later if you need additional capacity for new strategies.
## Funding Your Account
To begin, click on **one of the wallets** in your wallets list.
You will be brought to the summary page for the wallet you selected. Now select **Receive**.
A receive address will appear. Copy this address.
From your Cardano wallet, manually send both ADA and SURGE to the address you copied.
Note: Only fund one wallet. The system will automatically distribute funds to different wallets when necessary.
**Your Surge account is now funded.**
⚠️ Note: Before creating a strategy, ensure that the wallet with funds has the star located next to it. This tells surge which wallet to start with.
## Creating Strategies
Now that your have generated 10 wallets and funded your account with ADA and SURGE, you can start building strategies. Begin by selecting **Strategies** from the left navigation panel.
The Strategies page will be blank at first. To create a new strategy, click **Create Strategy** in the top right corner.
A popup will appear where you will configure your strategy.
Begin by setting your desired daily net buy and sell volumes of tSURGE, both denominated in ADA.
* **Daily Buy Volume:** Amount of ADA used to purchase SURGE each day (ADA → SURGE).
* **Daily Sell Volume:** Amount of SURGE sold for ADA each day, in terms of ADA (SURGE → ADA).
Your total daily volume is the sum of buys and sells. If buys exceed sells (or vice versa), your account will experience a net buy or net sell of SURGE, which will shift the balance between ADA and SURGE. This behavior can be used strategically depending on your goals - such as buying SURGE
The next variables to set are the minimum and maximum trade size in ADA. Surge will randomly select a value within this range for each trade.
* **Minimum Trade Size:** Smallest trade size in ADA.
* **Maximum Trade Size:** Largest trade size in ADA.
At the bottom of the page you will see duration. This determines the duration over which the total entered by and sell volumes are executed.
Your strategy is now configured. Select **Create Bot** to save your strategy and prepare it for execution.
Your bot strategy has been created and is now listed on the Strategies page. To begin running your strategy, press on it.
Locate and select the "Run Automation" button. The strategy will begin running immediately with your ADA, SURGE, and the wallets you generated. A countdown will display the time until the next trade. You can pause or delete bots at any time, and deleting a bot will not affect your funds.
⚠️ **Note:** Only one strategy can be running per pair.
⚠️ **Note:** You must have enough ADA and SURGE in your wallets to perform the trades. If the trades fail its likely because you dont have enough funds in your wallets. Make sure your trade size range is smaller than your wallet balance.
⚠️ Note: All strategies and transactions are built and executed locally on your machine. For strategies to run, your computer must stay on, connected to the internet, and the Surge tab must remain open. If your computer shuts down, loses connection, or the tab is closed, the strategy will pause, but your funds and keys will remain fully secure.
## Understanding Outputs
While configuring a strategy, and while a strategy is running, Surge will display several outputs:
* **Total Daily Volume:** The combined amount of daily buys and sells.
* **Net Buys/Sells:** The difference between total buys and total sells. Keeping this at zero results in no net market impact. Setting sells higher than buys produces a net sell, increasing ADA funds. Setting buys higher than sells produces a net buy, accumulating more of the token. This value is independent of total daily volume.
* **Net ADA Change:** The result of Net Buys/Sells minus daily fees. Fees include Cardano chain fees, liquidity pool fees, and the Surge fee. Users may choose to offset fees by setting daily sells slightly higher than buys, keeping Net ADA Change at zero.
* **Average Trade Size:** Surge randomly selects trade sizes between the user-defined minimum and maximum. A higher maximum is possible with deeper liquidity, while a smaller minimum increases the number of trades per day. More trades increase chain fees but reduce slippage.
* **Estimated Number of Daily Trades:** Total daily volume divided by average trade size. Higher volume and lower average size result in more trades.
* **Estimated Time Between Trades:** 1,440 minutes in a day divided by the estimated number of daily trades. This indicates the average spacing between trades.
* **Estimated Trades per Wallet:** Estimated daily trades divided by the number of wallets. Fewer trades per wallet create more organic activity. Greater wallet counts and higher funding improve this effect.
* **Asset Balances:** Surge is funded with equivalent values of ADA and the selected CNT. Strategies with imbalanced net buys or sells, along with token price changes and slippage, may cause uneven balances. Adding additional ADA or CNT to rebalance helps maintain optimal performance.
* **Funding Amount:** Higher funding enables greater activity. Small amounts (such as 10k ADA and the equivalent value of the CNT) can generate more than 100k ADA in daily volume. For mainnet, a more conservative approach is recommended.
## Tracking your Surge Activity
Visit the Dashboard to view your Surge market-making statistics, including total volume, net buys and sells, transaction count, and more. You can also track volume over time and review buys and sells by time period.
The Wallets page shows all wallets in your Surge account, including total balances of ADA and SURGE, transaction counts, and active status. Each wallet preview displays asset balances, activity status, names, receive addresses, and more. As your strategy executes, you can track funds moving seamlessly between wallets in real time.
Selecting a wallet opens its detail page, displaying balances, activity, and complete transaction history. Each transaction hash can be accessed directly in the history and viewed on the [CardanoScan website](https://cardanoscan.io/). Transactions may take a few minutes to display on CardanoScan.
View detailed information about your strategies by going to the Strategies page and selecting a strategy. The ability to edit strategies and view further insights will be rolled out with mainnet.
## Visualizing Surge Running on Minswap
Surge operates through the [Minswap Pre-Production testnet](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/). You can view the ADA/SURGE pair on the Minswap website, where all buy and sell orders from Surge users will appear along with volume, price, and other data.
## Tutorial complete!
Great job completing the Surge mainnet tutorial! You have learned how to set up your account, generate and fund wallets, and create strategies to start market making on Cardano. Share your feedback with us in our Discord and stay tuned for more Surge updates!
# Testnet Tutorial
## Testnet Tutorial
Welcome to the Surge Pre-Production Testnet! \
\
Surge is a non custodial market making platform built for the Cardano blockchain. Unlike traditional centralized market making solutions on other chains, Surge reflects Cardano’s values of decentralization and community coordination. It brings professional grade automated trading to anyone, anywhere, regardless of skill level, creating a level playing field in the DeFi landscape. This democratization of trading power is expected to drive growth in Cardano’s on chain liquidity and volume, which are both essential for adoption and represent one of Cardano’s greatest opportunities for improvement.\
\
The Surge testnet gives anyone the chance to experiment with Surge’s infrastructure in a safe environment, helping you learn how to create bots, fund wallets, and manage strategies before moving to mainnet.\
\
**The Surge public testnet showcases core functionalities:**
**Wallet Management**
* Create and manage multiple Cardano wallets from a single Dapp wallet, with all keys stored locally and securely on your machine. Surge mainnet will support thousands of wallets per user.
* Fund your account easily by sending ADA and MIN to a single wallet in your Surge account
* Assets are automatically distributed across wallets and optimized for your active strategy
**Strategies**
* Build strategies by defining four targets:\
• Total daily buy volume (ADA to MIN)\
• Total daily sell volume (MIN to ADA)\
• Minimum trade size in ADA\
• Maximum trade size in ADA
**Note**\
Some functions are unavailable on testnet, including concurrently running strategies and certain data visualizations. These will be fully supported at mainnet launch.
**Testing**\
Surge is currently running on the MIN/ADA pair on Minswap Pre-Production Testnet.
## **Setting up Testnet Wallet**
1. Set up a new or load up an existing *Pre-Production Testnet* wallet. We recommend Eternl.
2. Request some **PreProd Testnet** ADA from the [Cardano Testnet Faucet](https://docs.cardano.org/cardano-testnets/tools/faucet) to your PreProd wallet.
3. Once you have recieved 10,000 tADA to your PreProd wallet, visit the [Minswap Pre Production Testnet](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/market) website and connect your PreProd Cardano dapp wallet. Find the [ADA/MIN pair](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/swap?cA=\&tA=\&cB=e16c2dc8ae937e8d3790c7fd7168d7b994621ba14ca11415f39fed72\&tB=4d494e) and purchase 5,000 ADA worth of MIN.
⚠️ **Note**: Minswap PreProd has two MIN tokens (tMIN and MIN). Buy MIN, which has higher liquidity and a token image. The link above points to the correct MIN. \
Testnet MIN token ID: e16c2dc8ae937e8d3790c7fd7168d7b994621ba14ca11415f39fed72
You now hold PreProd ADA and MIN, which you can use on Surge. At mainnet launch, all Cardano assets with Minswap pools will be supported.
## Connecting to Surge Testnet dApp
1. Connect your PreProd wallet in the Surge dApp here:
2. Click **Grant Access** so the dApp can read your wallet balances and allow you to interact with the dApp.
Your dashboard will load up with information pertaining to your Surge strategy execution:
All figures will initially be at 0. Let's change that.
## Creating Wallets
At the top of the page, select the trading pair you would like to use. For this tutorial, choose **ADA/MIN**. Once a pair is selected, your dashboard, wallets, and trading strategies will all be tied to that pair.
In the future, users will be able to run strategies across multiple pairs, with each pair having its own dedicated strategies and wallets managed through the pair selector.
Next, navigate to the **Wallets** page.
The Wallets page shows all wallets linked to your account and selected pair. Since you are just starting, there will be none created.
Click **Generate** to begin creating wallets.
⚠️ Note: Ensure the ADA/MIN pair is selected in the top right of the app. Wallets are generated for the pair you select, with each pair having its own strategies and wallets managed through the pair selector. Wallets created under “All Pairs” cannot be used for ADA/MIN.
A popup will appear where you can generate up to **500 wallets**. For testing purposes with 5,000 tADA, we recommend starting with **10 wallets**. After selecting the number of wallets you want, press **Generate x Wallets**.
Surge will then create the number wallets you specified, and they will appear in your Wallets list.
💡 **Tip:** You can always generate more wallets later if you need additional capacity for new strategies.
## Funding Your Account
To begin, click on **one of the wallets** in your wallets list.
You will be brought to the summary page for the wallet you selected. Now select **Fund**.
A receive address will appear. Copy this address.
From your Cardano Preprod wallet, manually send all 5,000 tADA and **all of the MIN** you purchased to the address you copied.
⚠️ Note: Because of the low price of MIN on the PreProd testnet, your purchase will equal approximately 500,000,000,000 MIN. Please send the full amount.
Note: You do not need to worry about funding specific wallets. The system will automatically distribute funds to different wallets when necessary.
**Your Surge account is now funded.**
## Creating Strategies
Now that your have generated 10 wallets and funded your account PreProd ADA and MIN, you can start building strategies. Begin by selecting **Strategies** from the left navigation panel.
The Strategies page will be blank at first. To create a new strategy, click **Create Strategy** in the top right corner.
A popup will appear where you will configure your strategy.
Begin by setting your desired daily net buy and sell volumes of MIN, both denominated in ADA.
* **Daily Buy Volume:** Amount of ADA used to purchase MIN each day (ADA → MIN).
* **Daily Sell Volume:** Amount of MIN sold for ADA each day (MIN → ADA).
Your total daily volume is the sum of buys and sells. If buys exceed sells (or vice versa), your account will experience a net buy or net sell of MIN, which will shift the balance between tADA and MIN. This behavior can be used strategically depending on your goals.
For testnet, we recommend setting buys and sells evenly to maintain balanced holdings of both tADA and MIN. We recommend keeping buys and sells at 25,000 ADA each or less daily considering the 5,000 tADA that will be used by most participants.
Please note that tADA is limited to **10,000 tADA per day** from the faucet. Be mindful of net-buy strategies, as the Surge team cannot provide additional tADA for testnet users.
The next variables to set are the minimum and maximum trade size in ADA. Surge will randomly select a value within this range for each trade. For testnet, **keep trade sizes at the default** of **20 ADA Minimum** and **200 ADA Maximum.**
* **Minimum Trade Size:** Smallest trade size in ADA. Recommended 20 ADA.
* **Maximum Trade Size:** Largest trade size in ADA. Recommended between 200 ADA.
Your average trade size is the midpoint between the two limits and determines the number of trades per day. Setting limits too low increases daily trades, leading to higher chain fees. Setting them too high increases slippage and risks failed transactions, since each account only holds 5,000 tADA in total. Keeping trade sizes proportionate to your balance helps ensure organic activity and smooth execution.
**Keep trade sizes at the default** of **20 ADA Minimum** and **200 ADA Maximum.**
Your strategy is now configured. Scheduling, duration, risk parameters, and other advanced features will be available at mainnet launch. Select **Create Bot** to save your strategy and prepare it for execution.
Your bot strategy has been created and is now listed on the Strategies page. It will begin running immediately with your PrerProd ADA, MIN, and the 10 wallets you generated. A countdown will display the time until the next trade. You can pause or delete bots at any time, and deleting a bot will not affect your funds. Editing stratgegies will be available at mainnet launch.
⚠️ **Note:** For the testnet phase, we recommend running only one strategy at a time to reduce complexity. The ability to run multiple strategies with different goals and trading pairs will be available on mainnet.
⚠️ **Note:** While your strategy is running, you may occasionally encounter failed transactions or 500 errors. In these cases, the bot will automatically reset and continue executing, so no action is required on your part.
⚠️ Note: All strategies and transactions are built and executed locally on your machine. For strategies to run, your computer must stay on, connected to the internet, and the Surge tab must remain open. If your computer shuts down, loses connection, or the tab is closed, the strategy will pause, but your funds and keys will remain fully secure.
## Understanding Outputs
While configuring a strategy, and while a strategy is running, Surge will display several outputs:
* **Total Daily Volume:** The combined amount of daily buys and sells.
* **Net Buys/Sells:** The difference between total buys and total sells. Keeping this at zero results in no net market impact. Setting sells higher than buys produces a net sell, increasing ADA funds. Setting buys higher than sells produces a net buy, accumulating more of the token. This value is independent of total daily volume.
* **Net ADA Change:** The result of Net Buys/Sells minus daily fees. Fees include Cardano chain fees, liquidity pool fees, and the Surge fee. Users may choose to offset fees by setting daily sells slightly higher than buys, keeping Net ADA Change at zero.
* **Average Trade Size:** Surge randomly selects trade sizes between the user-defined minimum and maximum. A higher maximum is possible with deeper liquidity, while a smaller minimum increases the number of trades per day. More trades increase chain fees but reduce slippage.
* **Estimated Number of Daily Trades:** Total daily volume divided by average trade size. Higher volume and lower average size result in more trades.
* **Estimated Time Between Trades:** 1,440 minutes in a day divided by the estimated number of daily trades. This indicates the average spacing between trades.
* **Estimated Trades per Wallet:** Estimated daily trades divided by the number of wallets. Fewer trades per wallet create more organic activity. Greater wallet counts and higher funding improve this effect.
* **Asset Balances:** Surge is funded with equivalent values of ADA and the selected CNT. Strategies with imbalanced net buys or sells, along with token price changes and slippage, may cause uneven balances. Adding additional ADA or CNT to rebalance helps maintain optimal performance.
* **Funding Amount:** Higher funding enables greater activity. On testnet, small amounts (such as 10k tADA and the equivalent value of the test token) can generate more than 1 million ADA in daily volume. For mainnet, a more conservative approach is recommended, and Surge will provide detailed liquidity guidelines at launch.
* **Health Score:** ratio of wallet balance to strategy activity, green indicates safe and red indicates risky.
## Tracking your Surge Activity
Visit the Dashboard to view your Surge market-making statistics, including total volume, net buys and sells, transaction count, and more. You can also track volume over time and review buys and sells by time period.
The Wallets page shows all wallets in your Surge account, including total balances of ADA and MIN, transaction counts, and active status. Each wallet preview displays asset balances, activity status, names, receive addresses, and more. As your strategy executes, you can track funds moving seamlessly between wallets in real time.
Selecting a wallet opens its detail page, displaying balances, activity, and complete transaction history. Each transaction hash can be accessed directly in the history and viewed on the [CardanoScan PreProd website](https://preprod.cardanoscan.io/). Transactions may take a few minutes to display on CardanoScan.
View detailed information about your strategies by going to the Strategies page and selecting a strategy. The ability to edit strategies and view further insights will be rolled out with mainnet.
## Visualizing Surge Running on Minswap Testnet
Surge testnet operates through the [Minswap Pre-Production testnet](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/). You can view the [ADA/MIN](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/swap?cA=\&tA=\&cB=e16c2dc8ae937e8d3790c7fd7168d7b994621ba14ca11415f39fed72\&tB=4d494e) pair on the Minswap PreProd website, where all buy and sell orders from Surge users will appear along with volume, price, and other data, just like on the Minswap mainnet application.
## Tutorial complete!
Great job completing the Surge Public Testnet tutorial! You have learned how to set up your account, generate and fund wallets, and create strategies to start market making on Cardano. Share your feedback with us in our Discord and stay tuned for more Surge updates!
# Testnet V2 Tutorial
### Welcome to the updated Surge Pre-Production Testnet!
\
Surge is a non-custodial, user friendly trade automation platform built for the Cardano blockchain. The protocol reflects Cardano’s values of decentralization and user sovereignty by making locally-run algorithmic trading power accessible by all Cardano users.
We hope to help as many teams and individuals get familiar with using Surge, as we believe driving growth in on-chain volume and transactions using the Surge protocol can be a positive factor in Cardano adoption.
The Surge testnet gives anyone the chance to experiment with Surge’s infrastructure in a safe environment before moving to mainnet. Feedback is appreciated and can be sent in the Feedback channel of the Surge Discord:
#### ***What you'll see in Surge Testnet V2:***
**Dashboard:**
* Monitor your automated trading performance and portfolio
**Wallet/Fund Management:**
* Create multiple Cardano trading wallets and store their keys locally
* Manage individual wallets, including manual asset sending and trading pair association for each
**Strategies**
* Configure, run, and view multiple trading strategies
## **Setting up Testnet Wallet**
1. Set up a new or load up an existing *Pre-Production Testnet* wallet. We recommend Eternl. Surge can currently trade through Minswap Pre-Production Testnet pools.
2. Request some **PreProd Testnet** ADA from the [Cardano Testnet Faucet](https://docs.cardano.org/cardano-testnets/tools/faucet) to your PreProd wallet.
3. Once you have recieved 10,000 tADA to your PreProd wallet, visit the [Minswap Pre Production Testnet](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/market) website and connect your PreProd Cardano dapp wallet. Find the ADA/tSURGE pair and purchase around 5,000 ADA worth of tSURGE.\
\
If the Minswap Pre-Prod website is inaccessible, you will have to create a strategy where only Buy orders are executed to build up reserves of tSURGE. This will be shown in following steps.\
\
Although we recommend the ADA/tSURGE pool because if pricing and liquidity, any pool on Minswap can be used if you have the assets.
4. You now hold tADA and tSURGE, which you can use on Surge.
## Connecting to Surge Testnet dApp
1. Connect your PreProd wallet in the Surge dApp here:
1. Click **Grant Access** so the dApp can read your wallet balances and allow you to interact with the dApp.
Your dashboard will load up with information pertaining to your Surge strategy execution:
All figures will initially be at 0. Let's change that.
## Creating Wallets
At the top of the page, select the trading pair you would like to use. For this tutorial, choose **ADA/tSURGE.** Once a pair is selected, your dashboard, wallets, and trading strategies will all be tied to that pair.
In the future, users will be able to run strategies across multiple pairs, with each pair having its own dedicated strategies and wallets managed through the pair selector.
Next, navigate to the **Wallets** page.
The Wallets page shows all wallets linked to your account and selected pair. Since you are just starting, there will be none created.
Click **Generate** to begin creating wallets.
⚠️ Note: Ensure the ADA/tSURGE or pair you are going to use is selected in the top right of the app before generating wallets. If this is not done wallets will have to be tagged with the pair individually.
A popup will appear where you can generate up to **500 wallets**. For testing purposes with 5,000 tADA, we recommend starting with **5-20 wallets**. After selecting the number of wallets you want, press **Generate x Wallets**.
Surge will then create the number wallets you specified, and they will appear in your Wallets list.
💡 **Tip:** You can always generate more wallets later if you need additional capacity for new strategies.
## Funding Your Account
To begin, click on **one of the wallets** in your wallets list.
You will be brought to the summary page for the wallet you selected. Now select **Receive**.
A receive address will appear. Copy this address.
From your Cardano Preprod wallet, manually send all 5,000 tADA and **all of the** tSURGE you purchased to the address you copied. If you were not able to buy tSURGE, just import all 10,000 tADA.
Note: You do not need to worry about funding specific wallets. The system will automatically distribute funds to different wallets when necessary.
**Your Surge account is now funded.**
## Creating Strategies
Now that your have generated 10 wallets and funded your account PreProd ADA and tSURGE, you can start building strategies. Begin by selecting **Strategies** from the left navigation panel.
The Strategies page will be blank at first. To create a new strategy, click **Create Strategy** in the top right corner.
A popup will appear where you will configure your strategy.
Begin by setting your desired daily net buy and sell volumes of tSURGE, both denominated in ADA.
* **Daily Buy Volume:** Amount of ADA used to purchase tSURGE each day (ADA → tSURGE).
* **Daily Sell Volume:** Amount of tSURGE sold for ADA each day, in terms of ADA (tSURGE → ADA).
Your total daily volume is the sum of buys and sells. If buys exceed sells (or vice versa), your account will experience a net buy or net sell of tSURGE, which will shift the balance between tADA and tSURGE. This behavior can be used strategically depending on your goals - such as buying tSURGE
For testnet, we recommend setting buys and sells evenly to maintain balanced holdings of both tADA and tSURGE. with 5,000 ADA/5,000 tSURGE, a maximum trade size of 500 ADA and a maximum daily volume of 250,000 ADA is advised to maintain stability.
Please note that tADA is limited to **10,000 tADA per day** from the faucet. Be mindful of net-buy strategies, as the Surge team cannot provide additional tADA for testnet users.
The next variables to set are the minimum and maximum trade size in ADA. Surge will randomly select a value within this range for each trade. For testnet, **keep trade size at maximum 500 ADA.**
* **Minimum Trade Size:** Smallest trade size in ADA.
* **Maximum Trade Size:** Largest trade size in ADA.
At the bottom of the page you will see duration. This determines the duration over which the total entereed by and sell volumes are executed. To achieve these entered numbers in 24 hours, select 24 hours. You can play with different configurations as well, just rememebr to keep the daily 24 hour volume under 250,000 to align with your test ADA liquidity.
Your strategy is now configured. Select **Create Bot** to save your strategy and prepare it for execution.
Your bot strategy has been created and is now listed on the Strategies page. To begin running your strategy, press on it.
Locate and select the "Run Automation" button. The strategy will begin running immediately with your PrerProd ADA, tSURGE, and the wallets you generated. A countdown will display the time until the next trade. You can pause or delete bots at any time, and deleting a bot will not affect your funds.
⚠️ **Note:** For the testnet phase, we recommend running only one strategy at a time to reduce complexity. The ability to run multiple strategies with different goals and trading pairs will be available on mainnet.
⚠️ **Note:** While your strategy is running, you may occasionally encounter failed transactions or 500 errors. In these cases, the bot will automatically reset and continue executing, so no action is required on your part.
⚠️ Note: All strategies and transactions are built and executed locally on your machine. For strategies to run, your computer must stay on, connected to the internet, and the Surge tab must remain open. If your computer shuts down, loses connection, or the tab is closed, the strategy will pause, but your funds and keys will remain fully secure.
## Understanding Outputs
While configuring a strategy, and while a strategy is running, Surge will display several outputs:
* **Total Daily Volume:** The combined amount of daily buys and sells.
* **Net Buys/Sells:** The difference between total buys and total sells. Keeping this at zero results in no net market impact. Setting sells higher than buys produces a net sell, increasing ADA funds. Setting buys higher than sells produces a net buy, accumulating more of the token. This value is independent of total daily volume.
* **Net ADA Change:** The result of Net Buys/Sells minus daily fees. Fees include Cardano chain fees, liquidity pool fees, and the Surge fee. Users may choose to offset fees by setting daily sells slightly higher than buys, keeping Net ADA Change at zero.
* **Average Trade Size:** Surge randomly selects trade sizes between the user-defined minimum and maximum. A higher maximum is possible with deeper liquidity, while a smaller minimum increases the number of trades per day. More trades increase chain fees but reduce slippage.
* **Estimated Number of Daily Trades:** Total daily volume divided by average trade size. Higher volume and lower average size result in more trades.
* **Estimated Time Between Trades:** 1,440 minutes in a day divided by the estimated number of daily trades. This indicates the average spacing between trades.
* **Estimated Trades per Wallet:** Estimated daily trades divided by the number of wallets. Fewer trades per wallet create more organic activity. Greater wallet counts and higher funding improve this effect.
* **Asset Balances:** Surge is funded with equivalent values of ADA and the selected CNT. Strategies with imbalanced net buys or sells, along with token price changes and slippage, may cause uneven balances. Adding additional ADA or CNT to rebalance helps maintain optimal performance.
* **Funding Amount:** Higher funding enables greater activity. On testnet, small amounts (such as 10k tADA and the equivalent value of the test token) can generate more than 1 million ADA in daily volume. For mainnet, a more conservative approach is recommended, and Surge will provide detailed liquidity guidelines at launch.
* **Health Score:** ratio of wallet balance to strategy activity, green indicates safe and red indicates risky.
## Tracking your Surge Activity
Visit the Dashboard to view your Surge market-making statistics, including total volume, net buys and sells, transaction count, and more. You can also track volume over time and review buys and sells by time period.
The Wallets page shows all wallets in your Surge account, including total balances of ADA and tSURGE, transaction counts, and active status. Each wallet preview displays asset balances, activity status, names, receive addresses, and more. As your strategy executes, you can track funds moving seamlessly between wallets in real time.
Selecting a wallet opens its detail page, displaying balances, activity, and complete transaction history. Each transaction hash can be accessed directly in the history and viewed on the [CardanoScan PreProd website](https://preprod.cardanoscan.io/). Transactions may take a few minutes to display on CardanoScan.
View detailed information about your strategies by going to the Strategies page and selecting a strategy. The ability to edit strategies and view further insights will be rolled out with mainnet.
## Visualizing Surge Running on Minswap Testnet
Surge testnet operates through the [Minswap Pre-Production testnet](https://testnet-preprod.minswap.org/). You can view the tADA/tSURGE pair on the Minswap PreProd website, where all buy and sell orders from Surge users will appear along with volume, price, and other data, just like on the Minswap mainnet application.
## Tutorial complete!
Great job completing the Surge Public Testnet tutorial! You have learned how to set up your account, generate and fund wallets, and create strategies to start market making on Cardano. Share your feedback with us in our Discord and stay tuned for more Surge updates!
# Links
X.com:
Discord:
Litepaper:
Website:
Tokenomics:
# Litepaper
Our Litepaper can be found [here](https://medium.com/@surgecardano/surge-litepaper-298cce77ebac)
# Tokenomics
Our Tokenomics can be found [here](https://medium.com/@surgecardano/surge-tokenomics-5d1136b286f4)
# Presale Article
Our Presale details can be found [here](https://medium.com/@surgecardano/public-sale-launching-tuesday-1a7c877a71ab)
# Legal Disclaimer
Surge is a permissionless, non-custodial software protocol that operates locally on a user’s machine. It provides tools to design, test, and execute automated trading strategies on the Cardano blockchain. At no time do the developers, maintainers, or contributors of Surge hold, custody, or control user funds, private keys, or strategies.
The protocol is provided strictly “as is,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied. Surge does not guarantee profitability, performance, uptime, or uninterrupted access. Trading digital assets is inherently risky and may result in the partial or total loss of capital. Users are solely responsible for their trading decisions, strategies, and compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, including those governing trading, financial services, and market conduct in their jurisdiction.
Surge does not provide investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. Nothing in the software, related materials, or communications should be construed as a solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any strategy, asset, or transaction.
By using Surge, you acknowledge and agree that the developers, maintainers, and contributors bear no liability for direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the protocol, including but not limited to financial losses, technical failures, or regulatory actions. Use Surge responsibly and at your own risk.
# Archive
Surge is a non-custodial market-making platform built for the Cardano blockchain. Cardano’s strongest opportunity for growth and adoption lies in increasing on-chain liquidity and market efficiency. Surge is built to address this through decentralized market-making infrastructure.\
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Built from the ground up for Cardano, Surge is a market-making platform designed to catalyze ecosystem-wide growth. It reflects the values of decentralization, accessibility, and community coordination that define Cardano. Unlike traditional market-making solutions on other chains — often centralized and selective — Surge is fully democratized. It enables any project, team, or individual to participate in market making without reliance on third parties. By making this essential infrastructure permissionless and non-custodial, Surge empowers Cardano’s community to collectively chart a competitive path towards the most active ecosystems in the blockchain industry.
# Utility, Governance, and Staking Mechanics
## Introduction: The Core Engine of the Surge Ecosystem
The SURGE token is engineered to be the central value-capture and utility asset of the Surge protocol. Its design is intentionally straightforward, focusing on three core mechanisms—direct revenue sharing, tiered platform capabilities, and decentralized governance—to create a symbiotic relationship between the protocol's growth and the interests of its token holders. This model transforms holders from passive spectators into active participants who benefit from platform success and collectively guide its future. This document will dissect each of these utility pillars, providing a strategic overview of how SURGE functions as the economic engine of the entire ecosystem.
## 1. Direct Value Accrual: 100% Revenue Sharing
A direct revenue-sharing model is a cornerstone of sustainable DeFi, creating a powerful and transparent link between platform success and token holder value. This mechanism establishes direct economic alignment, ensuring token holders are the primary beneficiaries of all platform activity. This fosters a deeply invested community committed to the protocol's long-term growth and adoption.
### **1.1. The Revenue Generation Mechanism**
Surge applies a transparent 0.1% fee on every transaction processed through the platform, collected in ADA. In a direct commitment to its community, 100% of this collected revenue is distributed to SURGE token holders who stake their tokens in the protocol.
### **1.2. Distribution and Rewards**
The ADA-denominated revenue is distributed to stakers proportional to each user's share of the total staked SURGE supply. This ensures that as a user's commitment to the network grows, so does their share of the protocol's earnings. Users can claim their accumulated dividends at any time through the Surge staking portal, providing full control over their returns.
To illustrate the potential, a platform trading volume of 100 million ADA would generate 100,000 ADA in revenue, all of which would be distributed among SURGE stakers. Furthermore, stakers can access additional yield through specialized pools, including a Flexible Pool offering an 8% APY and Commitment Pools offering between 12-25% APY for time-locked stakes.
### **1.3. A Sustainable, No-Emission Model**
The SURGE token has a fixed total supply of 25,000,000 with zero emissions. This is a deliberate strategic choice designed for long-term value integrity, standing in contrast to inflationary models that dilute holder value over time. By tying rewards exclusively to real platform usage and transaction volume, this model creates a healthy economic flywheel where value is derived purely from the protocol's utility, not from token printing.
While direct revenue provides a tangible financial return, staking is also the key that unlocks the full operational power of the Surge platform.
## 2. Unlocking Advanced Capabilities: Tiered Platform Access
Surge employs a tiered platform access model architected as a clear progression path for users. This model incentivizes long-term holding and deeper engagement by rewarding users with progressively more powerful tools, greater trading capacity, and reduced costs. The tiers are designed to empower participants as they grow with the platform—from a retail trader utilizing simple automations to a quantitative trader or institutional desk running sophisticated, multi-venue strategies.
### **2.1. The Staking Tiers and Benefits**
The benefits are structured across five distinct levels, each unlocking significant operational advantages.
| Tier | Minimum SURGE Staked | Wallet Limit | Fee Discount | Revenue Share Boost | APY Bonus | Support Access |
| -------- | -------------------- | ------------ | ------------ | ------------------- | --------- | -------------- |
| Free | 0 | 10 | 0% | 0% | 0% | Email only |
| Bronze | 1,000 | 50 | 10% | +2% | 1% | Priority email |
| Silver | 5,000 | 150 | 20% | +5% | 2% | Chat support |
| Gold | 25,000 | 300 | 35% | +10% | 3% | Dedicated rep |
| Platinum | 100,000 | 500 | 50% | +20% | 5% | 24/7 hotline |
**Note:** The numbers shown are for example purposes only and subject to change.
### **2.2. Amplifying Trading Power**
Staking SURGE directly translates to greater capital efficiency and trading power. Higher tiers unlock the ability to operate a significantly larger number of active wallets—up to 500 for Platinum members—enabling more sophisticated, discreet, and scalable trading strategies. This capability is critical for users seeking to scale from small-scale retail operations to institutional-level liquidity provision, such as those running multi-venue arbitrage systems.
### **2.3. Access to Exclusive Features**
Beyond volume and fee benefits, staking SURGE provides access to the platform's most advanced and exclusive features. These capabilities are reserved for community members who are most invested in the protocol:
* Access to AI-driven strategies: Deploy autonomous agents that execute complex trading logic.
* Use of community-built strategy templates: Leverage powerful, pre-configured strategies created by other experienced users.
* Priority access to new features: Be the first to test and utilize new tools as they are released.
The platform's AI integration is a game-changer, allowing users to create sophisticated strategies using simple natural language prompts. This dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for deploying professional-grade automation. This tiered model not only provides a ladder for user growth but also empowers the most committed participants with a voice in the protocol's future through its governance framework.
## 3. Shaping the Future: Decentralized Governance
Governance is the mechanism that completes the decentralization of the Surge protocol, empowering its community to collectively steer the platform's evolution. This commitment to progressive decentralization ensures the protocol remains aligned with user needs over the long term, solidifying its position as resilient, community-owned financial infrastructure.
### **3.1. Scope of Governance**
SURGE token holders are granted direct voting power over key strategic and operational decisions, ensuring the community has a definitive voice in the protocol's development. The scope of governance includes voting on proposals related to:
* Implementation of new platform features
* Changes to the protocol's fee structures
* Proposals for Centralized Exchange (CEX) listings
* Deployment of the DAO treasury funds
### **3.2. The DAO Treasury**
A total of 7% of the total SURGE supply is allocated to a DAO treasury, which functions as the community's war chest. The use of these funds—whether for ecosystem grants, strategic initiatives, liquidity provisioning, or future development—is determined entirely by SURGE holders through on-chain governance votes. This provides the community with the capital and authority to drive ecosystem growth and strategically guide the protocol, ensuring its long-term success.
This governance power completes the token's utility loop, giving holders not only a financial stake and enhanced access but also a direct voice in the protocol's strategic direction.
## Conclusion: A Symbiotic Token Model
The SURGE token is engineered as a multi-faceted asset that fully integrates its holders into the protocol's lifecycle. It delivers value through three distinct yet interconnected pillars: direct financial returns from revenue sharing and staking APYs, enhanced operational power through a tiered access system, and strategic control via decentralized governance rights. This symbiotic model ensures that as the Surge protocol grows in volume, utility, and market presence, its success is directly and transparently shared with the community that supports and directs it.