By a16z crypto, Sonal Chokshi, Chris Dixon
4.6
5454 ratings
The podcast currently has 57 episodes available.
with @baileyflan @ahall_research @rhhackett
Today we’re dusting off an ancient practice that has become trendy once again: the old-but-new idea of “sortition,” or selecting representatives by lottery.
Sortition was used in ancient Athenian democracy to elect public officials. It’s also been lately revived by tech companies like Meta and AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic to tackle some of their thorniest policymaking challenges.
Our guests today are experts on sortition, including Bailey Flanigan, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard who is joining MIT as an assistant professor next year, and who has helped develop selection algorithms for sortition that are in use today. Also joining is Andrew Hall, Stanford University poli sci professor, advisor to Meta, and consultant to a16z crypto research.
In this episode, we discuss why not to rely exclusively on expert authority, how the process of deliberation changes people’s minds, and how sortition can apply everywhere from the governance of countries to the governance of crypto projects, and more.
Related resources:
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 @pmarca @bhorowitz
Today we’re running a special episode featuring a16z cofounders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talking about AI bots and crypto. They discuss what happens when you mix postmodern theories and internet memes in an LLM. They also get into the sudden rise of a strange memecoin, the state of crypto regulation in the U.S., and more.
This episode is a crossover from the Ben & Marc Show, which you can follow on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
See the original episode:
As always, none of the content should be taken as tax, business, legal or investment advice. See a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
with @DarenMatsuoka @eddylazzarin @rhhackett
Welcome to web3 with a16z. Today we're taking you behind the scenes of our newly released, annual State of Crypto Report — a16z crypto's analysis of the latest data and trends that have defined the industry in 2024.
This year's report features some brand new insights, from estimating the number of real crypto users globally, to understanding how much interest in crypto swing states may have ahead of the U.S. election. We also dig into infrastructure improvements to blockchains and key applications — including stablecoins, AI, and so-called DePIN. Be sure to visit a16zcrypto.com for all this and more including a new “Builder Energy” dashboard, which we’ll discuss on the show.
Joining me to talk about the findings are lead data scientist and report author Daren Matsuoka and CTO Eddy Lazzarin. The first voice you'll hear after mine is Daren's, then Eddy's.
a16z crypto resources:
As always, none of the content should be taken as tax, business, legal or investment advice. See a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
Welcome to web3 with a16z. Today we explore the messy secrets of blockchain bridges. These cross-chain connectors are the go-betweens in today's multichain world, but their short history has been a checkered one, with prominent projects succumbing to major hacks and other hijinks.
So we've brought on one of the builders who knows this world best to help disentangle the messiness. That’s Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero Labs, maker of a popular blockchain interoperability protocol. In this episode, Bryan delivers a crash course on the evolution of bridges, including the ups and downs of various approaches. You'll also learn about the technology's inner workings, its applications, and how it fits in with ongoing efforts to scale blockchains.
Joining is a16z crypto general partner Ali Yahya, who is also an expert in this area; plus me, your cohost, Robert Hackett. The first voice you'll hear after mine is Bryan's, then Ali's.
As always, none of the content should be taken as tax, business, legal or investment advice. See a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
with @HilmarVeigar @eddylazzarin
Our featured guest today is Hilmar Pétursson, the CEO of CCP Games, maker of EVE Online, a massive multiplayer online role playing game. In this episode, Pétursson shares his unique world view and game-making philosophy, as well as a deep dive into the technology and economic design of his sci-fi simulation. He also touches on how niche cults can break into mainstream culture, how slow databases can make for fun gameplay, and what to expect from EVE Frontier, a new blockchain-based overhaul of the space survival game that is now inviting people to apply as playtesters.
The other voice you'll hear is that of Eddy Lazzarin, a16z crypto’s Chief Technology Officer and an avid gamer himself. This conversation originally took place earlier this year at a16z crypto's CSX startup accelerator program in London, videos of which are posted on the a16z crypto YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe for more thought-provoking conversations and other insightful content.
Related links:
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 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:
As a reminder, none of the following is 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 @ahall_research @eddylazzarin @0xShuel @smc90
In this episode, we cover both recent events + evergreen governance questions in political systems: Specifically, we breakdown the recent Compound “governance attack”... as well as the broader topic of DAO governance and voting in general. We also discuss how to avoid, prevent, and respond to such governance attacks -- highlighting key differences between on-chain/ token-based/ digital voting systems vs. physical-world political systems around the world.
What happens when you have activity from actors that the majority doesn’t necessarily agree with? How do you distinguish between good-faith and bad-faith activity, especially on-chain? And other such tricky questions?? Our experts answering these questions (in conversation with Sonal Chokshi) include:
- a16z crypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin;
- head of network operations Ross Shuel;
- and a16z crypto research collaborator, and Stanford professor of political science, Andrew Hall.
The episode begins by quickly recapping the exact sequence of a recent Compound governance “attack” event a few weeks ago -- including discussing whether “governance attack” is the right label for it or not; how it’s different from other attacks; and the broader trend of online vs offline governance attacks in general -- before then going into specific solutions. The team also shares some behind-scenes tick tock on what happened, how people figure out motives behind actions on-chain (especially given the "indistinguishability problem"), and much more.
Pieces mentioned in this episode and other resources:
with @eddylazzarin @milesjennings @rhhackett
Today’s episode covers all things tokens — that includes what tokens have to do with decentralized protocols, understanding the different types of tokens, and, of course, the Do's and Don'ts of designing and launching a token.
Our guests are a16z crypto chief technology officer Eddy Lazzarin, as well as a16z crypto general counsel and head of decentralization Miles Jennings, the two of whom have advised many scores of projects on protocol design and tokencraft. They discuss what sets web3 apart from earlier technology eras; avoiding common pitfalls in the search for product market fit; how to reason about various designs and strategies, as well as their risk and reward tradeoffs; and more.
Related resources:
The token launch playbook (part 1)
The token launch playbook (part 2)
As a reminder: None of the content should be taken as investment, legal, business, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
with @matthewclifford @smc90
This special episode is all about regional innovation — at both a systems and people level.
We cover what does and doesn’t work in making certain places become hubs of innovation and economic growth (aka “innovation ecosystems”). But we also discuss — going back and forth between the structural and individual — when to intervene for entrepreneurial talent; the nature of ambition, yearning, and finding one’s path; and more broadly, mindsets for navigating risk/reward and dynamism in different regions including London and Europe. We also discuss new ways of funding breakthrough R&D at a national level, tech trends of interest including crypto, and much more.
Our special guest — in conversation with editor in chief Sonal Chokshi, who also brought him to the a16z Podcast over 8 years ago in its first-ever UK roadshow in December 2015 — is Matt Clifford, who’s played an important role in the London entrepreneurial and tech ecosystem since 2011. Matt is the Chair of Entrepreneur First (which he co-founded with Alice Bentinck over a decade ago); and is also the Chair of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). [Before this episode was recorded, Matt was also the Prime Minister’s representative for the AI Safety Summit — which he helped organize at Bletchley Park (the historic home of computing in the UK); after this episode was recorded, Matt was appointed by the UK secretary of science to deliver an “AI Opportunities Action Plan” to the UK government, which was just announced last week.]
Fittingly, this episode was recorded live from Andreessen Horowitz’s first international office, in London; for more on our efforts there, and other content from there, please visit a16zcrypto.com/uk.
As a reminder: None of the following should be taken as investment, legal, business, or tax advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information -- including a link to a list of our investments.
with @rhhackett @smc90 @stephbzinn @tim_org
In this fun hallway-style conversation, a16z crypto's Sonal Chokshi, Robert Hackett, Tim Sullivan, and Stephanie Zinn discusses picks from our latest annual summer reading list, as well as evergreen/ Lindy picks that show up on our what-we're-reading lists again and again. We also share our top picks of all time.
Throughout, we also discuss HOW we read — whether audiobooks count as reading or listening, graphic novels, read-alouds; on multiple modes of reading; and technologies for reading and how they have changed us over time. Which books are better as movies and TV shows, and games too? Also, are collaboratively-filtered recommendations via family or friends really that great? What other heuristics — and anti-heuristics! — do we use to read?
Finally, WHY do we read?? Is mythology and fantasy filling a hole left by religion? Wherefore nonfiction vs. fiction... or seemingly new genres such as "infotainment," "romantasy," and others? From Shakespeare to Prince Harry to erstwhile seafarers to modern mermaids, this episode is a rollicking ride — and love letter — to all things books, and reading, from the a16z crypto editorial team and Andreessen Horowitz. Curiosity is magic, after all!
The podcast currently has 57 episodes available.
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