Cover for The Content Layer

The Content Layer

A Constitutional Upgrade to the Browser Start Page

Browsers are the world's most universal software, yet their first mile remains blank. The Content Layer proposes a constitutional upgrade: replacing the empty browser start page with user-chosen premium dashboards like Netflix, Xbox, Disney, Civics and routing a small, ring-fenced revenue skim into a Defense Fund for the Open Web. The model converts wasted real estate into a recurring civic dividend, establishing predictable funding for digital infrastructure while preserving market competition and user choice.

GovernanceDigital InfrastructurePublic Utility DesignCivic Technology
Published: October 13, 2025
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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 specifications, reference models, and published whitepapers that examine how incentives, governance, and infrastructure can be represented clearly and designed to scale. He is the founder of the Jellen Protocol Lab, which serves as the emerging home for this research. Flagship work includes the Universal Sports Graph (USG), a protocol-based framework spanning RFC-style specifications and a versioned reference registry.

© 2026 Scott Jellen. Licensing varies by publication.