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Elizabeth Stark is cofounder and CEO of Lightning Labs, where she is building a programmable financial layer for the internet through fast, scalable blockchain transactions. Further, she is a fellow at Coin Center, the leading digital currency policy organization, and an advisor at Chia, a company building a new blockchain protocol based on proof
of space and time. Stark previously taught at Stanford and Yale University about the future of the internet, and was a visiting fellow at Yale’s Information Society Project. Elizabeth played an instrumental role in the Internet freedom effort that defeated SOPA/PIPA, engaging 18 million people worldwide. She has advised startups ranging from decentralized technology to AI and was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Stanford StartX. Stark holds a J.D. from Harvard.
Elizabeth Stark (San Francisco, USA) is a blockchain entrepreneur, educator, crypto startups advisor, Fellow at the digital currency policy organization Coin Center, co-founder, and CEO of Lightning Labs, an organization which aims to scale blockchains.
Elizabeth Stark hails originally from Brooklyn. She has lived and worked in Berlin, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, and currently resides in San Francisco. Elizabeth is a graduate of Harvard University and holds a JD from Harvard Law. She is fluent in English, French, German, and Portuguese. Elizabeth is a great fan of open source, decentralized protocols, and an avid listener of electronic music.
During study at Harvard, Elizabeth was Editor-at-Large of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology where worked with the Harvard Advocates to make better use of new media to promote human rights. Stark founded the Harvard Free Culture Group and was on the board of directors of Students for Free Culture. Moreover, she was an affiliate of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Elizabeth Stark was a Lecturer in Computer Science, P2P technology, open-source software, Internet memes, and other technologies at Yale and Stanford University, and was a Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project and an Adjunct Associate Professor at NYU.
Stark is a co-founder and CEO of Lightning Labs, a company that introduced a financial layer for the internet with fast, scalable bitcoin transactions, tagged “Layer Two.” It is better known as the Lightning Network, which public beta version was released.
Elizabeth Stark is one of the key organizers in the anti-SOPA movement that engaged 18 million people worldwide. Elizabeth Stark is also a co-founder of the Open Video Alliance, which seeks to promote innovation and free expression in online video.
She serves as a mentor in the Thiel Fellowship to provide support and guidance to students under 23 years who have an intention to drop out of school to pursue other projects.
