Hi, I'm Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee. Founder of DIGITALAX. Why do I have a double-double-barrelled name?
Actually, it's really common in Portugal and Brazil. Sobrenome materno primeiro, paterno por último. É a norma, não a exceção.
First names aren't always compound, and it's rare to use a hyphen. But still — the full name builds its own structure. It takes forever to write, sure. But I've always had it. They used to call me four names. There’s something powerful about not having your roots entirely erased — so that one day, when you’re ready, you can return and find something there. Especially for women, history tends to be overwritten. Luckily for me, my mother was fiercely against that.
I code full time at DIGITALAX, the Web3 Fashion protocol I founded in 2020. My code and content is released CC0. I mostly write in Rust, Solidity, and TypeScript — and every line is political. I write to emancipate the stack. I'm pro-human, pro-machine, pro-d/acc.
I first tinkered with Python at 16, casually. Then came Matlab at engineering school — before I dropped out.
After founding DIGITALAX, engineering independence became painfully obvious as a critical skill for any serious web3 founder. That's when I committed to learning full stack properly — from smart contracts to building frontends that don't feel like tech bro marketing slop.
Because the truth is you can't write for a decentralized future without knowing how to build the entire surface it runs on.
There are a lot of codebases to maintain. Constant refactors, rewrites, migrations. I'm a solo founder and dev across all projects. Since late ‘22, the machines challenged me to a dance-off. And when they don't hallucinate — and I can run them local, open — I collaborate with them too.
This is a 24/7 lifestyle. But I do it because I have to. Because I'm suffocating in a world where these tools for autonomy still don’t fully exist. This isn't a lifestyle for everyone, and frankly I don’t believe in separating work from life. That split is a trap. What you love and what must be built should converge.
I'm also a fashion designer. An artist. And a language obsessive — I'm at around 13 now, and counting.
I first tinkered with Python at 16, casually. Then came Matlab at engineering school — before I dropped out.
After founding DIGITALAX, engineering independence became painfully obvious as a critical skill for any serious web3 founder. That's when I committed to learning full stack properly — from smart contracts to building frontends that don't feel like tech bro marketing slop.
Because the truth is you can't write for a decentralized future without knowing how to build the entire surface it runs on.
There are a lot of codebases to maintain. Constant refactors, rewrites, migrations. I'm a solo founder and dev across all projects. Since late ‘22, the machines challenged me to a dance-off. And when they don't hallucinate — and I can run them local, open — I collaborate with them too.
This is a 24/7 lifestyle. But I do it because I have to. Because I'm suffocating in a world where these tools for autonomy still don’t fully exist. This isn't a lifestyle for everyone, and frankly I don’t believe in separating work from life. That split is a trap. What you love and what must be built should converge.
I'm also a fashion designer. An artist. And a language obsessive — I'm at around 13 now, and counting.
