a16z crypto show

a16z
a16z
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The a16z crypto show explores how decentralized networks are reshaping money, ownership, and the architecture of the internet. We go beyond the hype to look at what’s actually working, what isn’t, and what comes next as crypto continues to go mainstream and blockchains become core infrastructure. Each episode features conversations with founders, engineers, economists, policymakers, and researchers building at the frontier of finance, payments, AI, and distributed systems. We cover stablecoins and global payments, the tokenization of "real-world" assets, decentralized physical infrastructure, network design and governance, and the practical tradeoffs behind decentralization — along with lessons from past technology shifts. Produced and hosted by the a16z crypto team, the show combines reporting, analysis, and first-principles thinking to explain how crypto intersects with the economy and society — and why it matters now. Learn more at a16zcrypto.com. *** Posts should not be considered investment advice or an advertisement for investment services. Reposts of third-party content are not attributable to a16z; see disclosures for more information: https://a16z.com/disclosures/.

  1. 2d ago

    Why auction design matters (ft. Nobel economist Paul Milgrom)

    Long before onchain markets made mechanism design a daily engineering problem, Nobel Prize winner Paul Milgrom was asking how prices actually form — and how better auction rules could reshape actual markets. His work helped transform auction theory from an elegant branch of economics into a practical toolkit for allocating scarce resources, from wireless spectrum to digital ads to financial markets. In this episode of First Principles, Tim Roughgarden, Head of Research at a16z crypto, sits down with Milgrom alongside Scott Kominers — Harvard Business School professor and a16z crypto research partner — for a conversation about auctions, information, price discovery, and the design of complex markets. Together, they explore Milgrom’s foundational work on auction theory, the famous Milgrom-Weber paper, the Grossman-Stiglitz paradox and the Glosten-Milgrom model of market microstructure, and why understanding how prices form matters for everything from prediction markets to decentralized finance. They also discuss Milgrom’s work designing the FCC spectrum auctions — including the auctions that helped allocate wireless spectrum for technologies like mobile broadband and 5G — and the later FCC incentive auction, a massive market design challenge that combined economics, computer science, policy, and real-world implementation. Highlights 00:00 Intro: economics assumptions that are “just wrong” 02:19 Scott Kominers on the genius of Paul Milgrom 05:35 The price discovery problem economics forgot 07:48 The auction theory breakthrough of the 1980s 17:15 Why market microstructure matters for DeFi 24:17 When math teaches economics something new 29:22 Designing auctions people can actually use 32:40 How theory became spectrum auction design 36:22 The floppy disk that helped convince the FCC 41:05 What changed when auctions moved online 45:28 The auction that reorganized television 57:25 Why the best auctions feel simple 1:07:30 What economics and computer science can learn from each other 1:13:22 Futures markets for compute 1:15:12 Paul Milgrom’s advice for builders About First Principles First Principles is a special limited series from a16z crypto about the scientific roots of modern computing — especially blockchains — told through rare conversations with the pioneers who helped shape the foundational ideas behind distributed systems, consensus protocols, economics, mechanism design, cryptography, zero knowledge, and more. People often tell the story of the Bitcoin whitepaper as if it appeared out of nowhere. But the ideas behind Bitcoin — and blockchains more broadly — come from decades of computer science, economics, mathematics, and cryptography. First Principles is a guide to that lineage, as told by the people who helped build it. Subscribe to follow along:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjQ9HCQMu_8yIg60YAq67HDdvp7E_T5e8 Hear more from Tim Roughgarden: https://twitter.com/Tim_Roughgarden Scott Kominers: https://twitter.com/skominers Follow a16z crypto X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 5d ago

    Why markets fail — and how to fix them (ft. Nobel economist Alvin Roth)

    Long before crypto made coordination programmable, Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth was designing markets where coordination could save lives.  In this episode of First Principles, Roth tells the story of how he helped build systems for some of the hardest matching problems in the world, from where doctors train and where students go to school to how kidney donors can reach the patients who need them.  He joins Tim Roughgarden, Head of Research at a16z crypto, and Scott Kominers — Harvard Business School professor, a16z crypto research partner, and one of Roth’s former students — for a conversation about how market design moves from theory into the real world. They explore how economic theory becomes practical engineering, whether that's matching riders to Ubers, doctors to medical residencies, students to New York City high schools, or organ donors to people whose lives depend on it.  They also cover how these same problems show up in today’s crypto networks. Roth explains why markets are not just natural forces, but engineered systems; why the details of timing, congestion, incentives, and trust can make or break a marketplace; and why some of the most important markets are the ones where simply exchanging money can’t do the work.  This is a conversation about economics at its most practical and profound: how to design systems that coordinate people, solve real problems, and sometimes save lives.  00:00 Intro: Why market design matters 04:18 The economist as engineer  08:09 When theory meets the real world  07:02 Fixing the medical residency match  15:32 Why markets unravel  18:22 Redesigning NYC high school admissions  28:05 The hidden problem of congestion  34:47 How kidney exchange saves lives  45:26 How the internet changed market design  48:25 Airbnb, Uber and smarter marketplaces  51:28 Repugnant transactions and moral economics  53:32 When markets need social support  54:32 The unexpected effects of criminalizing surrogacy  01:04:58 Preference signals and the job market  01:18:53 A broken market: resettling refugees and other migrants  Hear more from:  Tim Roughgarden: https://twitter.com/Tim_Roughgarden  Scott Kominers: https://twitter.com/skominers  Follow a16z crypto:  X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto  Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/ * ** As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Jun 25

    Leslie Lamport on the Science of Distributed Systems

    Before blockchains could reach consensus, Leslie Lamport had to define what agreement even meant when computers fail, lie, or disappear.  In this episode of First Principles: The Scientific Roots of Blockchain Technology, Turing Award-winning computer scientist Leslie Lamport joins Tim Roughgarden Head of Research at a16z crypto and Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, and a16z crypto Research Partner Ittai Abraham to trace the ideas that helped define modern distributed computing.  Lamport’s work formalized some of the field’s deepest questions: how to reason about concurrent systems, how distributed systems can agree despite failures, and how to prove that protocols do what they are supposed to do. His work on logical clocks, state machine replication, the Byzantine Generals problem, and Paxos has shaped everything from cloud infrastructure to the consensus protocols underlying modern blockchains.  The conversation begins with Lamport’s early work on concurrency and the origins of the Byzantine Generals Problem, and then turns to fault tolerance: what happens when machines crash, behave unpredictably, or even act maliciously? We also cover the feedback loop between theory and practice, the long arc of fundamental research, and how blockchains are inheriting and extending decades of distributed systems work.  Highlights  00:00 – Intro: The problem every blockchain is built to solve  02:52 – Why concurrent systems are surprisingly tricky  04:40 – The origins of the bakery algorithm  07:37 – What does it mean for a protocol to be “correct”?  12:03 – The origins of the Byzantine Generals problem — and what happens when some computers fail  17:49 – How Paxos emerged from an attempted impossibility proof  23:47 – Why theory and practice need each other  33:48 – Government funding, DARPA, and the long arc of foundational research  About First Principles  First Principles is a special limited series from a16z crypto about the scientific roots of modern computing — especially blockchains — told through rare conversations with the pioneers who helped shape the foundational ideas behind distributed systems, consensus protocols, economics, mechanism design, cryptography, zero knowledge, and more.  People often tell the story of the Bitcoin whitepaper as if it appeared out of nowhere. But the ideas behind Bitcoin — and blockchains more broadly — come from decades of computer science, economics, mathematics, and cryptography. First Principles is a guide to that lineage, as told by the people who helped build it.  Hear more from:  Tim Roughgarden: https://twitter.com/Tim_Roughgarden  Ittai Abraham: https://twitter.com/ittaia  Follow a16z crypto:  X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto  Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/  ***  As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Jun 22

    Before Blockchains, There Was State Machine Replication (ft. Barbara Liskov and Tim Roughgarden)

    Every blockchain today leans on replication ideas worked out in the 1980s, by a Turing Award winner who wasn’t thinking about how it might apply to money at all.  In this episode of First Principles, a16z crypto Head of Research and Columbia professor Tim Roughgarden speaks with Barbara Liskov, MIT professor, Turing Award winner, and one of the most influential computer scientists in programming languages, data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing. a16z crypto research partner Ittai Abraham joins the conversation.  The discussion traces Liskov’s path from programming languages and modularity to distributed systems research; from CLU and Argus to viewstamped replication; and from benign failures to Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, or PBFT — a protocol family whose ideas now shape many modern blockchain systems. Liskov explains why modularity matters, how systems researchers thought about replication in the 1980s, why view changes were such a key idea, and how PBFT extended earlier work to handle malicious behavior on the internet.  The conversation also explores the bridge between theory and practice, the importance of proofs and specifications, and why the next generation of systems research may be reshaped by AI. First Principles is a special, limited series from a16z crypto about the scientific roots of modern computing — especially blockchains — told through rare conversations with the pioneers who helped shape the foundational ideas behind distributed systems, consensus protocols, economics, mechanism design, cryptography, zero-knowledge, and more. People often tell the story of the Bitcoin whitepaper as if it appeared out of nowhere. But the ideas behind Bitcoin — and behind blockchains more broadly — come from decades of computer science, economics, mathematics, and cryptography.  First Principles is a guide to that lineage, as told by the people who helped build it.  Highlights:  00:00 Intro: How do systems stay reliable when parts fail?  01:18 Barbara Liskov’s path from programming languages to distributed systems  05:45 Why modularity is “everything”  07:22 The replication problem: keeping data available across many machines 09:58 Viewstamped replication and the “ledger” before blockchains  16:32 Why good research starts with what you don’t understand  18:10 Leslie Lamport, Paxos, and the inevitability of ideas in the right time, in the right place  21:48 Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance: what changes when replicas can lie  19:35 How PBFT bridged theory and practical systems  22:38 Why you should never trust an individual replica  28:39 Why blockchains are state machine replication in the wild  31:27 AI, verification, and the future of computer science  Follow:  Tim Roughgarden: https://twitter.com/Tim_Roughgarden  Ittai Abraham: https://twitter.com/ittaia  Follow a16z crypto: X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto  Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/  *** As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Jun 22

    How Bitcoin Rewired a Classic Computer Science Problem (ft. Tim Roughgarden and Ittai Abraham)

    Bitcoin often gets credited with inventing trustless consensus. It didn’t.  The problem was named decades earlier — in the world of distributed computing — and researchers spent years studying how machines could reach agreement even when some participants were faulty, adversarial, or corrupt. What Bitcoin did was something different: It solved a classic Byzantine agreement problem in a radically new, permissionless setting. And it took the research world years to fully recognize what Satoshi had done. In this episode of First Principles, a16z crypto Head of Research and Columbia professor Tim Roughgarden is joined by a16z crypto research partner Ittai Abraham — one of the world’s leading researchers in Byzantine agreement and consensus protocols, a founding member of VMware’s blockchain project, and founder of the technical blog Decentralized Thoughts — to unpack the scientific roots of blockchain consensus.  Together, Tim and Ittai trace the line from classic distributed systems research to Bitcoin, proof-of-stake, Tendermint, Casper, DAG-based protocols, Solana’s Alpenglow, and the modern race for higher throughput and lower latency. Along the way, they explain why concepts like Byzantine fault tolerance, state machine replication, safety, liveness, and partial synchrony are not just academic abstractions — they are the language and design principles behind today’s blockchain protocols.  This conversation kicks off First Principles: The Scientific Roots of Blockchain Technology — a special, limited series from a16z crypto on the scientific ideas behind modern computing — especially blockchains — told through conversations with the pioneers who helped create them, including Barbara Liskov, Leslie Lamport, and more. Hosted by Tim Roughgarden, the series explores the foundational concepts behind distributed systems and consensus protocols; economics, mechanism and market design; and cryptography, from digital signatures to zero knowledge. People often tell the story of the Bitcoin whitepaper as if it appeared out of nowhere.  But the ideas behind Bitcoin — and behind blockchains more broadly — come from decades of computer science, economics, mathematics, and cryptography. First Principles is a guide to that lineage, told by the people who helped build it.  Highlights  00:00 Introduction to First Principles: The Scientific Roots of Blockchain Technology  00:56 Why consensus matters for blockchains  02:30 Byzantine agreement: The old computer science problem Bitcoin made practical  04:34 Blockchains as a shared system of record: State machine replication and blockchain state  06:41 How two research worlds — distributed computing and crypto — began to converge  07:49 Proof of work vs. proof of stake  09:27 Why Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake took years  11:08 When crypto rediscovered decades of distributed systems research  11:50 Why BFT became practical 12:49 Throughput, latency, and modern consensus design  14:05 DAG-based protocols and faster blockchains  15:25 Peace time vs. war time: why modern blockchains need two modes  16:47 Theory, practice, and the future of blockchain research    Follow:  Tim Roughgarden: https://twitter.com/Tim_Roughgarden  Ittai Abraham: https://twitter.com/ittaia  Follow a16z crypto:  X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto  Substack: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/  **  As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Jun 12

    How Stablecoins Are Reconfiguring the Financial System | ft. Eddy Lazzarin and Sonal Chokshi

    Crypto has been walled off from the real economy for years — that's changing.  Sonal Chokshi and Robert Hackett sit down with Eddy Lazzarin, a16z crypto's newest General Partner, to break down why crypto is entering a completely different phase and what gets built once the rules finally catch up to the technology.  The discussion spans:  - what the CLARITY Act actually does and why it changes the design space for crypto founders  - the difference between a network token and a security, and why it needs to be written into law  - why stablecoins are crypto's first real killer app and how the rest of the economy is reconfiguring around them  - how tokens let builders decouple pricing from growth in a way stocks never could  - why 97.8% of the value created in capitalism leaks out, and what that means for anyone trying to capture any of it  Highlights:  00:00 Intro  01:25 What it means to be a GP  02:00 Consensus vs. non-consensus bets  04:27 Network tokens and the CLARITY Act  09:35 Revenue, value capture, and network-token business models  21:18 Stablecoins as crypto’s first killer app  28:52 Engineer-philosopher mindset 39:04 Intellectual influences  52:40 Eddy’s path to crypto 1:03:15 The exuberant adoption phase of AI  1:14:38 Being "pro–AI psychosis"  Follow: Eddy Lazzarin: https://twitter.com/eddylazzarin  Sonal Chokshi: https://twitter.com/smc90  Robert Hackett: https://twitter.com/rhackett  Follow a16z crypto:  X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto  Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/  As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. May 13

    The Real Reason Behind Most DeFi Hacks

    Following a string of major DeFi exploits, we unpack what’s driving the recent rise in hacks across crypto. a16z crypto GP Eddy Lazzarin and security engineer Matt Gleason join host Robert Hackett to take a closer look. Their argument: AI is not introducing entirely new vulnerabilities. It is making existing weaknesses easier to identify and exploit. The question is whether defenders can evolve as quickly as attackers. They also cover: - why “AI-powered hacking” is difficult to measure - how geopolitical tensions may be influencing cyber activity - why defenders should be aggressively stress-testing their own systems - how AI could eventually outperform humans at resisting social engineering - what users can do today to protect themselves online   Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:57 - The surge, explained 01:37 - Did attackers use AI 04:19 - How AI can help defend against attacks 09:16 - The doomsday marketing debate 17:17 - DeFi transparency: opportunities and challenges 21:00 - Social engineering and how to stay safe   Follow along here: Eddy Lazzarin: https://twitter.com/eddylazzarin Robert Hackett: https://twitter.com/rhackett Matt Gleason: https://twitter.com/mg_486662 Follow a16z crypto: X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/   As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. May 5

    We Raised $2.2B. Here’s Why.

    We're announcing a16z crypto's Fund 5: $2.2B in committed capital to back the startups and founders who are building the next era of crypto. All four GPs sat down to talk through where crypto is right now, what's changed, and where it may be headed next. Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, Guy Wuollet, and Eddy Lazzarin join Robert Hackett to cover... 00:00 Open  01:31 Why raise Crypto Fund 5 now  02:10 The GENIUS Act and what regulatory clarity unlocks for builders  04:32 Why stablecoins are crypto's WhatsApp moment  08:54 Why the next era of crypto founders will be pragmatic, not ideological  11:49 From cypherpunk revolution to crypto's "collared shirt era"  15:02 Programmable money meets AI  21:15 Onchain capital markets for compute, energy, and credit  25:57 Why finance is the foundation, not the ceiling  28:48 AI agents as first-class economic actors  38:19 Why privacy is the only moat  41:26 Jevons paradox and the future of blockspace demand  43:20 Jolt and the zero-knowledge breakthrough  58:15 Writing the next chapter of Read Write Own Resources:  Chris Dixon: https://x.com/cdixon Ali Yahya: https://x.com/alive_eth Eddy Lazzarin: https://x.com/eddylazzarin Guy Wuollet: https://x.com/guywuolletjr Robert Hackett: https://x.com/rhackett Follow a16z crypto: X: https://x.com/a16zcrypto  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/   ***  As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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About

The a16z crypto show explores how decentralized networks are reshaping money, ownership, and the architecture of the internet. We go beyond the hype to look at what’s actually working, what isn’t, and what comes next as crypto continues to go mainstream and blockchains become core infrastructure. Each episode features conversations with founders, engineers, economists, policymakers, and researchers building at the frontier of finance, payments, AI, and distributed systems. We cover stablecoins and global payments, the tokenization of "real-world" assets, decentralized physical infrastructure, network design and governance, and the practical tradeoffs behind decentralization — along with lessons from past technology shifts. Produced and hosted by the a16z crypto team, the show combines reporting, analysis, and first-principles thinking to explain how crypto intersects with the economy and society — and why it matters now. Learn more at a16zcrypto.com. *** Posts should not be considered investment advice or an advertisement for investment services. Reposts of third-party content are not attributable to a16z; see disclosures for more information: https://a16z.com/disclosures/.

Information

  • Channel
    a16z
  • Creator
    a16z crypto, Robert Hackett, Sonal Chokshi
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    123
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © a16z crypto / Andreessen Horowitz
  • Show Website
    a16z crypto show

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