Elizabeth Stark

Stark set out to solve one of Bitcoin’s biggest problems: Scaling. Her startup, Lightning Labs, has developed tech that can offload some of the burden of transaction processing from Bitcoin's main network. Along with other contributors, her company helped design the Lightning Network, a layer of tech that enables faster, cheaper Bitcoin payments. Before becoming an entrepreneur and raising millions from the likes of tech veterans such as Jack Dorsey, she taught classes on the Internet and peer-to-peer technologies at Stanford and Yale.