digital-sovereignty
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The Lab That Tried to Replace the Web Became a 750-Team Operating System
Protocol Labs started by giving data an address that could survive a broken link. A decade later, it is testing a larger idea: whether an open network can move research from strange prototype to useful company faster than a conventional lab can.
Edge
Edge is a San Diego company building a self-custody, privacy-first mobile wallet for buying, storing, swapping and spending more than 120 cryptocurrencies. Founded in 2014 as Airbitz and rebranded to Edge in 2018, it pioneered a username-and-password login model backed by client-side encryption and a zero-knowledge architecture, so private keys and account data never leave a user's device unencrypted. The same security layer is offered to developers as the Edge Login SDK.
Paul Puey
Paul Puey is the CEO and co-founder of Edge, a San Diego-based self-custody crypto wallet and security platform. A UC Berkeley electrical engineering and computer science graduate who once shipped 3D graphics at Nvidia, he caught the Bitcoin bug in 2013 and launched Airbitz in 2014, rebranding it to Edge in 2017 as crypto moved beyond Bitcoin. His pitch is stubbornly simple: if you do not hold your keys, you do not own your coins, and security belongs on the edges of the network, in your hands, not on someone else's server.
Henry Poole
Henry Poole is the co-founder and CEO of CivicActions, a professional services firm that has spent over two decades modernizing government digital services through open source software, agile methodologies, and human-centered design. A serial entrepreneur and open source visionary, Poole co-founded one of the first digital agencies (Vivid Studios) in 1993, published the landmark Affero General Public License (AGPLv1) in 2002 to close the 'ASP loophole' in open source licensing, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation. Under his leadership, CivicActions has become a trusted partner to major federal agencies including CMS, NSF, VA, and HHS, championing the principle that software built with public funds should be publicly owned.