How Blockchain Tech Advances Benefit Other Industries

with Dan Boneh @tim_roughgarden @smc90

In this special 50th episode of the web3 with a16z podcast, we discuss how work in the blockchains/ crypto space has led to advances in several important technologies — which can be (and are being) used by many other industries beyond crypto.

Tim Roughgarden (a16z crypto Head of Research and professor at Columbia University) and Dan Boneh (a16z crypto Senior Research Advisor and professor at Stanford University) discuss these advances in conversation with Sonal Chokshi. 

Topics covered include automated market makers; credible auctions, collusion, and mechanism design not possible before; as well as zero knowledge; trusted execution environments (TEEs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE); and much more. We also discuss the recurring theme of how web3 provides a laboratory not only for experiments in governance, but for macroeconomics and more. The two also offer many useful explanations for anyone new to these technologies or seeking to understand why they matter in the big picture. 

It’s an innovation story we’ve seen over and over again, from the space program to other massive invention efforts: Technologies developed for one purpose often lead to benefits for humanity overall.

Pieces mentioned in this episode and other resources:

• On some results  and challenges in cryptoeconomics  -- Tim Roughgarden, CESC 2022
• 8 reasons why blockchain mechanism design is hard -- Tim Roughgarden, a16zcrypto.com, 2024
• The computer in the sky (short version) -- Tim Roughgarden,  2024
• Zero knowledge canon -- with Justin Thaler's annotated bibliography, a16zcrypto,com 2022
• Using zero-knowledge proofs to fight disinformation -- Trisha Datta and Dan Boneh, IACR 2023
• VerITAS: Verifying Image Transformations at Scale -- Trisha Datta, Binyi Chen, Dan Boneh, 2024
• Achieving crypto privacy and regulatory compliance [+pdf of full paper]-- Joseph Burleson, Michele Korver, Dan Boneh, 2022
• Credible auctions: A trilemma -- Mohammad Akbarpour, Shengwu Li, Econometrica, 2020
• Auction design for web3 [episode 3 of this podcast] -- Scott Duke Kominers, Tim Roughgarden, Sonal Chokshi, 2022
• Building Cicada: Private on-chain voting using time-lock puzzles -- Michael Zhu, 2023
• Transaction fee mechanism design for the Ethereum blockchain: An economic analysis of EIP-1559 -- Tim Roughgarden, 2020
• Collusion-resilience in transaction fee mechanism design -- Hao Chung, Tim Roughgarden, Elaine Shi, 2024
• Transaction fee mechanism design in a Post-MEV world -- Maryam Bahrani, Pranav Garimidi,Tim Roughgarden, 2024
• Notes on Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) -- Barnabé Monnot, 2022
• Complexity-approximation tra