Holds an edge well is very subjective and depends on what level of dullness you are going to use your knife to. There's a big difference between sharp enough to cut notebook paper and sharp enough for phonebook paper I feel.
Considering the blade length I feel like it's mostly going to be used for chopping/splitting, etc. In that case I would recommend something simple like 5160/S7/H13/L6/1084/1075/4130/1055 or after those 01/52100. The reasoning is that blades used for chopping blunt/dull much differently than blades used for slicing/cutting. When used for chopping a blade will dull through impaction and chipping, especially considering wood is often dirty or you hit a knot or something. Being that is the case you want something very tough at as high a hardness as possible to also give it strength. After that, because it will undoubtedly take some damage if you really use it hard, you want something that is easy to grind and sharpen, which the steels mentioned offer because of their lack of carbides. As a bonus they are usually cheaper.
What you want to avoid are the high carbide steels (D2, S30V, Elmax, etc) as the high carbide loads will make the edge much less stable (think concrete and the aggregates in it), so to protect the edge from chipping, etc you'll have to run relatively high edge angles. The carbides and the edge retention they provide are really only valuable if you are cutting abrasive material where their wear resistance comes in handy.
3V is fine for choppers, but it does, relatively speaking have more carbides than the "simple" steels like 5160 and is also much harder to grind and repair (this is assumign you aren't using power tools which tend to even things out in terms of sharpening difficulty).
Having said all that, you really do have a ton of steel options. The most important thing is going to be the maker. When you find out who you are going to have make the blade, talk with them and ask them what kind of testing they've done on the blade, how they themselves use knives, see if they've pushed it to failure, what they expect the blade to stand up to, ask if their designs have evolved etc.
If they don't want to answer those kinds of questions or can't, I'd move on.