Built from curiosity, conviction,
and an unconventional path

Derek Arsenault is the founder of Pilon Laboratories and the inventor of XInfinitum, the PALLAS device, the Quantum State Key, and the HXC Code — a suite of technologies he conceived and developed entirely through self-directed research and a lifelong refusal to accept the limits others placed on what he was supposed to know.

His love of physics began in high school, where it was his favourite subject and where he pursued it at the advanced level. It was there that he first encountered the strange and beautiful logic of how the universe actually works — a fascination that never left him. When he entered post-secondary education, however, the path narrowed. Enrolled in an arts degree at a large institution, he found himself feeling like a number rather than a person — adrift in a system that seemed designed to produce outcomes rather than to cultivate minds. His introverted nature made the experience feel smaller still, and the more honestly he examined it, the less he could reconcile the cost — financial, spiritual, social, educational — with what was being offered in return. A degree in the arts, he felt, was not going to answer the questions that mattered most to him. The deeper truth was that he didn't yet know who he was or what he wanted from life, and he believed those answers deserved to be found before he committed to a debt that might only deepen the uncertainty. So he left.

He went his own way, and it wasn't easy. But the path he chose — unconventional, self-directed, and entirely outside the prescribed route — forged the thinker he eventually became. He is not certain he would be standing where he stands today if he hadn't had the courage to walk it.

His return to physics deepened through a book. After reading Lynne McTaggart's The Field in 2008, he became absorbed in the study of quantum mechanics — following emerging research, engaging with primary literature, and drawing connections across disciplines that formal education rarely encourages. What began as rekindled curiosity evolved over nearly two decades into a working framework for post-quantum cryptographic architecture.

His philosophical foundations run equally deep. A lifelong student of Plato, Homer, and the broader Western philosophical tradition, Derek has long been preoccupied with one question above all others: what is money, and why does the current answer to that question concentrate power at the expense of individuals? That conviction — that decentralized, mathematically-sovereign currency is not just preferable but necessary — has been the animating force behind everything Pilon Laboratories is building.

Derek first entered the crypto space in 2016–2017 as an investor and active participant, watching the ecosystem mature while quietly developing his own ideas about where it needed to go. His professional background is in advertising and creative media, where he spent years as a social media manager and creative writer for national brands at an agency in Atlantic Canada. That background — equal parts strategic communication and storytelling — informs how he thinks about technology: not as an end in itself, but as a means of reshaping the relationship between people and systems of power.

It was not until the emergence of accessible artificial intelligence that Derek was able to begin building what had long existed only as vision. AI became the bridge between a lifetime of accumulated ideas and a coherent, executable plan — the collaborator that allowed a single, self-directed mind to design cryptographic systems, develop firmware, draft white papers, and architect a full technology stack without an institution behind him or a funded team in front of him. What AI made possible was not the ideas themselves — those had been forming for years — but the ability to act on them with precision and velocity.

That capability came to fruition in early 2026, when Derek formalized his independent research into a coherent business suite and business plan, filing his first patents and publishing his white paper in April 2026. He is currently seeking pre-seed or angel investment and assembling the core team that will bring XInfinitum, the PALLAS device, and the broader Pilon Laboratories ecosystem to testnet and beyond. He believes this moment — when individual inventors can finally build at the scale once reserved for well-resourced teams — is one of the most significant inflection points in the history of human creativity, and he intends to be proof of it.

He is passionate about film, gaming, the arts, and the intersection of culture and science — and believes the next generation of cryptographic infrastructure should be built by people who care about all of those things.