About

Independent Researcher & Protocol Designer

I'm an independent researcher focused on how rights, incentives, and access are structured and where those structures break down. My work develops protocol-oriented models, schemas, and standards-style documents that make institutional systems legible, testable, and improvable through clearer architecture.

My background is in software and interface design, and I still approach problems through those lenses: treating systems as interfaces, tracing constraints, and analyzing how small structural choices compound into large institutional outcomes. I prototype selectively, but my primary work sits at the level of protocol design, systems modeling, and rights architecture.

My flagship project is the Universal Sports Graph (USG), a standards-grade framework for representing sports rights, entitlement structures, and interoperable distribution. USG spans RFC-style specifications, JSON schemas, and a versioned reference registry of rights objects. Beyond USG, I maintain a cohesive research corpus—whitepapers, briefs, and RFCs—that explores how modern institutions behave when incentives are explicit, interfaces are well-defined, and system design prioritizes long-term coherence over short-term optimization.

The Approach

Scott Jellen is an independent researcher working at the intersection of protocol design, rights modeling, and interoperability across digital and public systems. His work includes standards-oriented drafts, reference models, and whitepapers that explore how incentives, governance, and infrastructure can be represented clearly. He is currently establishing the Jellen Protocol Lab as a future home for this work. Flagship research includes the Universal Sports Graph (USG), spanning RFC-style specifications and an early reference registry.

© 2026 Scott Jellen. Licensing varies by publication.