with @ilblackdragon @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z. I’m your host, Robert Hackett.

In this episode, we're diving deep into one of the most intriguing intersections in tech today: AI and crypto.

To help us unpack it, we're joined by Illia Polosukhin — co-founder of the crypto protocol NEAR and co-author of the groundbreaking 2017 "transformers" paper that kicked off the current AI boom. Ilia has been early to some of the biggest recent tech trends, and today he brings us a rare, panoramic view of the tech industry’s cutting edge.

Together we explore what the phrase “user-owned AI” really means; why the so-called agentic internet — that is, a world where your AI assistant talks directly to services on your behalf — might replace the very notion of websites and apps as we know them; and much more.

Timestamps:

(0:00) Introduction
(3:40) Centralization and Challenges of AI
(6:17) "User-Owned" AI
(12:14) Confidential Computing and AI
(17:51) The Birth of Transformers
(22:33) NEAR AI and Crowdsourcing
(27:56) AI Agents and Future Applications
(31:04) The End of Websites and Applications
(34:08) Dead Internet Theory & Distinguishing Humans
(41:49) Open Source vs. Open Weight Models
(43:48) Geopolitical Implications of AI
(46:55) NEAR Protocol and Blockchain Scaling
(59:29) The Role of Humans in an AI World

Resources:

• Attention is all you need by Vaswani et al. (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 2017)

As a reminder, none of the content 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.

with @eddylazzarin @DarenMatsuoka @ahall_research @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z. I’m Robert Hackett.

Today we’re talking about one of the most familiar — and most misunderstood — mechanics in crypto: the airdrop.

We’ll explore the history of airdrops in and outside crypto, the challenges of incentive design, and learnings from airdrops to date. We’ll also answer questions like how do you avoid Sybil attacks and professional airdrop farming? Should your drop be big or small, one-time or ongoing? And what happens when AI agents enter the mix? 

To break it all down, we’re joined by:

• a16z crypto’s Chief Technology Officer Eddy Lazzarin;
• a16z crypto Data Science Partner Daren Matsuoka; and
• a16z crypto Research Consultant Andrew Hall, who is also a Professor of Political Economics at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Whether you're planning a token launch, looking for token rewards, or just curious why airdrops have become such a powerful mechanism in crypto — this episode is for you. 

Timestamps:

(0:00) introduction

(1:42) what is an airdrop?

(6:27) tokens vs traditional equity

(8:49) incentive design challenges

(15:18) origins from credit cards to crypto

(17:14) Optimism airdrop case study

(23:09) NFT market learnings

(28:32) Sybil resistance and verifying humanity

(33:04) Uniswap airdrop and beyond

(36:35) AI agents and the future of airdrops

(40:33) connection to performance reviews

(45:30) token vesting and volatility

(49:08) experimentation vs. best practices

(59:20) Batesian mimicry

Resources:

• Research into how airdrops can increase user retention [Optimism Collective forum; January 2025]
• Effects of Optimism airdrop 2 on governance participation [a16z crypto; June 2024]
• One From Many: Visa and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock [Berrett-Koehler Publishers; October 2005]
• How the '9-Box' talent review system can make or break your career [Forbes; March 2024]
• Batesian mimicry [American Museum of Natural History; July 2023]

As a reminder, none of the content 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.

with @mostrovs @skominers @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z. I’m your host Robert Hackett, and today we’re talking about congestion pricing — an area of mechanism design that’s aimed at alleviating something everyone hates: traffic.

Now you may have heard this term recently since New York adopted its own version of congestion pricing at the beginning of the year. This is the first program of its kind in the U.S. — and it’s got supporters and detractors. We’ll talk about that, and we’re also going to talk about much more. 

In the first part of today’s episode we’ll trace the history of the economic ideas that got us here. In the middle, we’ll dig deeper into the details of putting congestion pricing into practice, plus technological alternatives. And in the final part, we’ll explore parallels to — and implications for — crypto networks.

Our guests are Michael Ostrovsky, a Stanford Economics Professor who specializes in this area and who has done research on congestion pricing in New York. We’re also joined by a16z crypto Research Partner Scott Kominers, who is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School where he teaches market design and entrepreneurship.

Timestamps:

(0:00) introduction

(1:51) NYC proposal history

(3:38) economic theory of congestion pricing

(9:15) implementation: challenges and solutions

(26:00) technological alternatives and drones

(29:49) overnight delivery and other possibilities

(35:20) carpooling and how to encourage it

(39:34) congestion pricing and crypto

(47:59) lessons for blockchains

Resources:

• Michael Ostrovsky's paper on congestion pricing in New York City (from before the launch, foreseeing its issues): https://web.stanford.edu/~ost/papers/nyc.pdf
• Michael Ostrovsky's thread that went viral on X shortly after the debut of congestion pricing in New York, discussing the post-launch evidence, his team's data collection efforts, and the link between observed data and predictions in the above paper: https://x.com/mostrovs/status/1876798157595476420
• Two of Ostrovsky's earlier theoretical papers on the topic: (1) https://web.stanford.edu/~ost/papers/complementarity.pdf, (2) https://web.stanford.edu/~ost/papers/sdc.pdf
• Economist William Vickrey's influential paper on congestion pricing: Vickrey, W. S. (1969). Congestion theory and transport investment. American Economic Review 59 (2), 251–260. https://matthewturner.org/ec2410/readings/Vickrey_AER_1969.pdf

As a reminder, none of the content should be taken as tax, business, legal, or investment advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

Welcome to web3 with a16z. Today we’re talking about a founder’s journey from academia to the tech startup world — and the many lessons he’s learned along the way. 

We dig into big ideas, like what people mean when they call blockchains "truth machines." We also share practical advice and insights, like how to go about deciding on your life’s work; what you can do to keep increasing — and compounding — your leverage; plus, how a bungled interview question can change your life.

Today’s episode features a conversation between Eigen Labs Founder Sreeram Kannan, formerly an associate professor at the University of Washington where he led its Blockchain Lab, and a16z crypto General Partner Ali Yahya. 

This conversation originally took place in the fall at our CSX crypto startup accelerator in New York. If you like what you hear, subscribe to the a16z crypto YouTube channel for this video and many others like it.

Timestamps:

(0:00) introduction

(1:25) open innovation

(4:08) evolution of blockchain technologies

(12:34) journey from academia

(16:00) one of the best life lessons

(19:40) impact of network information theory

(24:31) activation energy and moving earth

(29:13) building a trust network

(36:20) blockchains as commitment engines

(45:17) Q&A

(45:57) the power of narrative

(52:19) restaking and the memetic sphere

(56:01) two approaches to problem solving

(59:53) startup focus and exponential games

(1:04:56) professor coins

(1:09:03) win-win or no deal

(01:13:59) conclusion

As a reminder, none of the content should be taken as tax, business, legal, or investment advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

with @SashaSpiegelman @Tim_Roughgarden @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z. Today we’re talking about the ins and outs of blockchain performance. 

How does the “speed” of one chain compare to another? What are the tricky ways that people talk about important metrics like throughput and latency? And how do design choices across things like consensus and execution result in performance tradeoffs? 

Our guest today is Aptos Labs’ Head of Research Sasha Spiegelman, who is helping build out and develop technologies he originally co-created at Meta. We’re also joined by a16z crypto Head of Research and Columbia University professor Tim Roughgarden, who specializes in the intersection of computer science and economics, which is fitting as we dig into technical details throughout.

Timestamps:

(0:00) introduction

(2:48) understanding blockchain metrics

(7:59) consensus protocols: PBFT and beyond

(14:56) innovations from Meta’s Novi to Aptos

(20:51) optimizing blockchain execution (with BlockSTM)

(25:23) tech debate: dynamic vs. static parallelism

(27:55) open source and the prisoner’s dilemma

(29:15) conclusion

***

As a reminder, none of the content should be taken as tax, business, legal, or investment advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

with @mg_486662 and @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z. I’m Robert Hackett and today we’re talking about what is potentially the biggest heist of all time — a hack of the Dubai-based crypto exchange ByBit which took place last month for a total of $1.5 billion and which the Federal Bureau of Investigation has attributed to a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group.

In this episode, we cover details of how the attack went down, the state of crypto security across different types of wallets and organizations, and what you can do to help protect yourself from similar attacks.

We’re joined by Matt Gleason, a security expert at a16z crypto, whose excellent write-up of the incident you can find below. We’ve also included an FBI PSA about the hack and other useful links as well.

Resources:

• Breaking down the ByBit hack: Lessons to learn from crypto’s largest heist [a16z crypto; March 2025]
• North Korea responsible for $1.5 billion ByBit hack [FBI; February 2025]
• Learn THIS so you don't lose $50M | Multi-sig (Safe) Hardware Wallet Verification [Patrick Collins on YouTube; January 2025]

As a reminder, none of the content 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.

with @haydenzadams @kidsuper @smc90

This episode involves a special mix of guests:

• Hayden Adams, founder and CEO of Uniswap Labs, and inventor of the Uniswap Protocol a leader in decentralized finance (DeFi); they recently announced Unichain; and
• Colm Dillane, the multimedia artist behind fashion brand KidSuper, CFDA award winner who has his own Warhol Factory-like creative studio and space; Dillane started out selling t-shirts in his highschool cafeteria, and then went on to present his collection at Paris Fashion week — and has also done creative campaigns for iconic brands from Louis Vuitton and Mercedes Benz to Puma and Converse

...in conversation with editor in chief Sonal Chokshi. The conversation originally took place at our Founder Summit (October 2024) but is more relevant than ever as the crypto industry focuses on mainstream applications and users. It covers:

• industry jargon, to making technology not just more broadly available but more culturally and socially understood
• the power of naming, including the origin story behind the unicorn and Unisocks and more
• the difference between marketing vs. spectacle
• the power of early community and what it means to expand to new users vs "sell out”
• drops -- “airdrops” in crypto; drops in fashion (a la Supreme), and just product launches in general

We also touch on some questions and issues around open source, including forking and copying -- good or bad? -- and whether a collective can actually do good design. 

The theme throughout is about innovating vs. stagnating -- learning from different industries and places; trying (unexpected) new things, even when there may not be a clear business case up front, and much more. 

As a reminder: None of the following should be taken as business, investment, legal, or tax advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information.

Welcome to web3 with a16z, today we’re running a special episode about the intersection of AI and crypto.

Our guests are a16z crypto Founder and Managing Partner Chris Dixon & a16z Growth General Partner David George. They discuss the broken economics of the internet, new models for creative people, how to think through the first-, second- and third-order effects of big platform shifts, and more. 

Today’s episode is a crossover from a16z’s AI Revolution conversation series — and it’s especially timely as the paperback edition of Chris Dixon’s bestselling book Read Write Own goes to print. Check out the show notes for links to those and more.

• Watch the video here
• Read the transcript here
• See more from the AI Revolution conversation series here
• Check out Chris Dixon's book Read Write Own here

As a reminder, none of the content 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.

with @1HowardWu @SuccinctJT @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z. Today’s show is all about privacy, why it matters, and how to achieve it technically onchain.

It's fair to say that many blockchains today are quite… revealing. But that openness and transparency doesn’t work for everything — who would want anyone to have full-on X-Ray vision into your finances? That’s one reason why there’s been a growing appreciation for — and trend toward — more blockchain privacy. 

Our guest today argues that there are many other reasons you might want some secrecy too, including a whole host of onchain applications and uses that only become feasible when you have a notion of privacy. That guest is Provable Cofounder and CEO Howard Wu who helped invent the protocols behind and build Aleo, a privacy-focused blockchain network. Wu joins a16z crypto Research Partner Justin Thaler, who is also a computer scientist at Georgetown University (as well as the brains behind the cutting-edge, open source zkVM Jolt), plus me, your host, Robert Hackett.

The first voice you’ll hear is mine, then Howard’s, then Justin’s. 

As a reminder, none of the content 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.

with @benleventhal @AriannaSimpson

Welcome to web3 with a16z. How many of you are regulars at a favorite cafe, bar, or dinner spot? Probably a lot of you — but if you’re not, well, our guest today aims to make you one. 

This episode features Ben Leventhal — the founder and CEO of BlackBird, and formerly the founder of Resy and Eater. In it, he shares his journey as a serial entrepreneur in conversation with a16z crypto General Partner Arianna Simpson.

Ben shares hard-won lessons learned in company-building, including navigating in wartime; the difference between measuring vs feeling when it comes to defining success; and more. 

Today’s conversation originally took place in the fall at our CSX Crypto Startup Accelerator in New York. We're currently accepting applications for our next cohort in the spring in San Francisco. Visit a16zcrypto.com/csx for more information and to apply.

As a reminder, none of the content 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.