Journal — Naming
Two names, one lab
In April 2025 the Lab was named, and a decision made then still shapes how the company is organized.
In April 2025, with the dissertation defended and the first public site being designed, two names were on the table for the research entity: Digital Sidewalk Labs and Gravel 9 Labs.
The choice
Digital Sidewalk carried the dissertation with it. A reader who knew the research would recognize the lab immediately, and the name says what the lab studies: decentralized learning communities and the conditions that make them work. Gravel 9 was the more enigmatic option. It kept a distance between public research and the private analytical systems being built alongside it, and it suited a product audience better than an academic one.
The decision was to use both, with a clear division. Digital Sidewalk became the public research and publication entity. Gravel9 became the applied engine: the name for products, hardware, and the private interfaces that the research feeds but does not publish.
Why this still matters
That April 2025 split is the origin of the company's current unit structure. Digital Sidewalk Lab is Unit 01 of Pip Projects, Inc.: research, publication, open sensing, and the channel every research thread passes through on its way to a paper or a release. Gravel9 is a separate unit for applied and commercial work. The two are related by lineage and by a shared parent, not by merger.
The first site, built that month, made three commitments that this edition keeps. Algorithms stay private; results and methods are what get published. The Lab is one researcher, named plainly, rather than an implied staff. And the visual identity was a dark system palette with a status register, which the current site still wears.
What changed since
The 2025 site described three research areas: the framework, cybernetic systems, and a "Global Homestead Initiative" for connecting sidewalks across places. The third idea was ahead of its evidence. It returns in this journal as the August 2026 global protocol, this time written as a testable question with declared failure conditions rather than as a program.