At the end of the day, I can't name many (if any) VPN providers that operate their own data center, which is extremely important since they all (including ProtonVPN) lease from the same companies. ProtonVPN does provide Secure Core though (routing traffic through certain countries to attempt to mitigate exit node threats), too.

I wasn't aware about Mullvad, thank you for pointing that out. I still have little clue who those people are, while Andy Yen has given a TED talk, so he has some public presence. I'm personally more inclined to trust them.