katelyn perna — kp · engineer · atlanta, ga
twelve years designing, building, and implementing the systems that hold digital assets without losing them — most of it for the crypto industry as it was being built.
i've stood up security at the first retail and institutional banks to offer crypto, at one of the fastest-growing startups in history, and at major crypto exchanges.
i work where architecture meets the real world: how money actually moves, who can touch it, and what happens when something goes wrong.
right now i'm developing the human protocol — a theory for how people use financial systems safely. the cryptography is solved. the hard part is the human layer.
security breaks where people touch it, so that's where i build: the defaults, the guardrails, and the interfaces that let ordinary people hold real value without becoming engineers.
design, build, implement. then make it safe enough for everyone else.
objects that mean something & ideas you can wear
2twelve is my creative concept studio — fashion, wearable technology, human identity.
We build 2twelve os: an operating system for physical objects. An NFC chip lives in a garment; tap it with a phone and a living experience opens — a poem, a credential, a memory. No app, no friction.
The studio is proof the platform works. Love notes was the first run: fifty RFID tees, fifty different poems. Keepsake is next. The supper club is where the same idea gets tested on a room full of people instead of a garment.
a space to build something
Invite-only dinners across Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco — a room of women who'd rather build than network.
You don't leave with business cards. You leave with something you made.
small rooms, real food, no panels.
sometimes we just eat. sometimes everyone ships something live before dessert.
"i'm not technical" is officially retired as an excuse.
a love story embedded across fifty rfid tees
Tap any shirt with your phone and a love note opens — poems written by me, inspired by life.
what is yours will always find you
Printed on the back of every shirt. That line is the whole idea: whatever shirt you tap, the note that opens was meant for you. One of fifty — 1/50, 2/50, each a different piece of the story.
all fifty notes — tap one to read it
see more at 2twelve.studio ↗— coming soon —
college of computing · guest lectures
I guest-lecture at Georgia Tech's College of Computing — one of the best engineering schools in the country, and an honor every time.
Twelve years of building and breaking real custody systems makes for good material. I bring it straight into the room: how digital assets are actually held, where security fails in practice, and the parts the textbook leaves out.
crypto security leader
Twelve years designing, building, and implementing custody and security — at the first retail and institutional banks to offer crypto, one of the fastest-growing startups in history, and major crypto exchanges.
employment
education
tantamount labs · 2024 · co-inventor
Tantamount Labs is a community I co-created for web3 artists, brands, and creatives — more tools to do what they do best, on chain.
The patent covers project origin, its first open-source project: a way for artists to cryptographically sign their work on-chain, using cryptography and steganography to hide proof of origin inside the artwork itself — without changing how it looks.
the place for all things 2twelve studio
Room 212 isn't an address. It's wherever the work is happening.
Some nights that's the studio. Some nights it's a hotel room in another city with samples all over the floor and everyone talking at once. It's where we get dressed, where we write, where we record, where a half-formed thought turns into a point of view.
Everything 2twelve starts in this room — the concepts, the essays, the podcast, the arguments we haven't settled yet. It leaves as a garment, a dinner, an entry.
The name comes from the same angel number the studio does — 2:12. Balance, faith, trust the path. The room shows up wherever we do.
elsewhere
what's been on the pile
a running list of things i am thinking about or working on in some capacity
If you are interested in any of these, let me know.
what's going around — mine, borrowed, and overheard
a field briefing
How one duct-taped banana, a faceless ghost named satoshi, and the whole NFT bubble run the same play — the value was never in the thing, it's in the paperwork that says it's valuable.
Dressed up as a classified terminal dump.
katelyn perna (kp) · atlanta, ga
2twelve is a creative concept studio working at the intersection of fashion, wearable technology, and human identity. Open to collaborations, commissions, and conversations — especially things that don't have a clear category yet.
the bad ideas didn't make it. the good ones are in the folders.