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a16z crypto show: Daily Summaries Delivered
by a16z crypto, Robert Hackett, Sonal Chokshi
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.
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- Aug 13, 20261h 15m
The 'Useless' Theory Behind Modern SNARKs (ft. Gödel Prize Winner Noam Nisan)
More than 30 years ago, Gödel Prize Winner Noam Nisan helped develop a proof technique that he never expected anyone to use in the real world. At the center of that breakthrough was the sum-check protocol — an elegant technique that emerged from Noam Nisan’s early work on interactive proofs. At the time, even Nisan assumed ideas like these were far too theoretical to become practical technology. Today, sum-check sits at the heart of some of the fastest modern SNARKs, proof systems that are increasingly important to blockchains and verifiable computation. In this episode of First Principles, a16z crypto Head of Research Tim Roughgarden and research partner Justin Thaler sit down with Noam Nisan to trace the unlikely journey from theory to infrastructure. They explore how interaction and randomness changed the very definition of a mathematical proof; the deceptively simple “two into one” insight behind sum-check; the rapid sequence of discoveries that culminated in IP = PSPACE; and why Justin believes sum-check may be close to the optimal tool for building practical SNARKs. But Nisan’s career also tells a broader story about how research responds to technological change. When the web arrived in the 1990s, he deliberately left a field in which he was already a leading researcher to understand a new problem: How do you get independent actors on the internet to cooperate when they have different incentives? That question helped give rise to algorithmic game theory — and, decades later, brought Nisan back to questions around blockchain fees, token economics, and protocol design. Highlights 0:00 — Intro 1:28 — Noam Nisan and the origins of verifiable computation 2:58 — Why Noam Nisan left complexity theory 7:52 — POPcorn, distributed computing, and early blockchain-like ideas 11:10 — The birth of algorithmic game theory 16:14 — Justin Thaler discovers the sum-check protocol 25:05 — From arithmetization to LFKN 27:06 — The story behind IP = PSPACE 30:40 — Why sum-check matters for modern SNARKs 31:15 — What is a SNARK? 38:52 — The key idea behind sum-check: turning two into one 44:03 — When SNARKs went from theory to practice 46:03 — Why blockchains were the breakthrough use case 50:36 — Noam Nisan’s move into blockchain economics 56:15 — EIP-1559, transaction fees, and efficient blockspace 1:02:07 — From theoretical computer science to real-world systems 1:08:49 — Boiling down the sum-check protocol: Two become one 1:10:58 — Is the sum-check protocol optimal? About First Principles First Principles is a series from a16z crypto exploring the foundational ideas behind modern computing, cryptography, and blockchains through conversations with the researchers who developed them — and the people extending those ideas today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Aug 10, 202657 min
How Zero-Knowledge Proofs Were Invented (ft. Co-Inventor and Turing Award Winner Shafi Goldwasser)
How can you prove that something is true without revealing why it is true? That question gave rise to zero-knowledge proofs, one of the most important breakthroughs in modern cryptography. What began as an attempt to solve a seemingly playful problem — playing poker securely over the telephone — ultimately changed how computer scientists think about proofs, privacy, and verification. In this episode of First Principles, Turing Award–winning cryptographer Shafi Goldwasser joins a16z crypto Head of Research Tim Roughgarden and Research Partner Justin Thaler to tell the origin story of zero-knowledge proofs and interactive proof systems. Goldwasser recounts how she, Silvio Micali, and Charles Rackoff developed a new kind of proof involving interaction, randomness, and a small probability of error. Their work introduced the idea that a prover could convince a verifier that a statement is true while revealing no additional information. The conversation follows those ideas through some of theoretical computer science’s deepest results, including interactive proofs, IP = PSPACE, probabilistically checkable proofs, the sum-check protocol, and SNARKs. These concepts now power blockchain rollups, privacy-preserving applications, and systems for verifying computation without repeating all the work. They also explore why breakthrough ideas are often initially rejected, how toy problems can lead to foundational theories, why abstraction and narrative matter in scientific research, and whether AI systems should be required to prove their answers. Highlights 0:00 — Intro 3:36 — How mental poker inspired zero-knowledge proofs: Proving that something is true without revealing the underlying information 6:30 — The simulation paradigm and the meaning of “zero knowledge” 8:33 — Why the original paper was repeatedly rejected 10:33 — How interactive proofs became more powerful than conventional proofs 13:36 — The road to modern SNARKs 19:02 — Why the sum-check protocol is so useful for verifiable computation 25:31 — Why many so-called “zk proofs” are not actually zero knowledge 34:06 — Why toy examples, playfulness, and narratives can produce deep theory 37:23 — The role of rigor and computational assumptions in cryptography 42:44 — Applying zero-knowledge proofs to law, evidence, and secret software 45:23 — Training AI systems to provide proofs alongside their answers 54:27 — Why genuinely new ideas are often difficult for experts to recognize 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. Links Shafi Goldwasser MIT CSAIL: http://people.csail.mit.edu/shafi/ Simons Institute: https://simons.berkeley.edu/people/shafi-goldwasser Tim Roughgarden a16z crypto: https://a16zcrypto.com/team/tim-roughgarden/ Website: https://timroughgarden.org/ "X: https://x.com/Tim_Roughgarden Justin Thaler a16z crypto: https://a16zcrypto.com/team/justin-thaler/ Website: https://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ X: https://x.com/SuccinctJT a16z crypto Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto Website: https://a16zcrypto.com/ X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto Newsletter: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Aug 1, 202658 min
Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon: Why America Needs CLARITY
a16z Cofounder and General Partner Marc Andreessen and a16z crypto Founder and Managing Partner Chris Dixon on why the CLARITY ACT matters. Congress is debating once-in-a-generation market structure legislation that could determine where financial and internet infrastructure gets built. Chris and Marc join host Robert Hackett to discuss why regulatory clarity matters, what the current policy environment has cost the United States, and what is at stake for developers, entrepreneurs, consumers, and the country’s technological leadership. Marc also looks back at his influential 2014 essay “Why Bitcoin Matters,” when supporting crypto was still a deeply contrarian position, and reflects on how the technology and the political debate around it have evolved since. The discussion explores the lessons of earlier technology revolutions, the importance of giving builders clear rules, and why crypto policy is ultimately about much more than a single industry. It is about who gets to shape the future of money, markets, and the internet. Highlights 00:00 Intro 05:31 From crypto subculture to financial infrastructure 08:37 Why crypto needs rules now 12:20 The regulatory war on crypto 15:41 How CLARITY could prevent another FTX 22:42 Why criminals using crypto may be easier to catch 26:20 Privacy, blockchains, and the invention of HTTPS 30:41 Government ethics and crypto 34:52 The banking lobby’s stablecoin fight 37:05 Why every major bank is building on blockchains 41:04 Developer liability as a killshot 45:23 How CLARITY provides oversight 49:30 What happens if CLARITY fails? 50:50 Regulation vs. innovation 54:12 Why America should lead 55:36 What CLARITY could unlock Links Marc Andreessen: https://twitter.com/pmarca Chris Dixon: https://twitter.com/cdixon Robert Hackett: https://twitter.com/rhackett Why Bitcoin matters: https://a16z.com/why-bitcoin-matters/ What builders need to know about the CLARITY Act: https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/clarity-act-what-why-matters Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto Site: https://a16zcrypto.com/ X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto Newsletter: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/ As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see https://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.
- Jul 27, 202658 min
How AI is Changing the Way We Build Companies (ft. Guy Wuollet and Noah Citron)
For the first time, companies can treat AI token spending almost like headcount: allocate more money, deploy more intelligence, and potentially get more work done. That shift could change much more than engineering productivity. It could reshape how companies form, how teams are managed, how businesses are financed, and who is best positioned to build them. In this episode, a16z crypto General Partner Guy Wuollet and Head of Engineering Noah Citron join host Robert Hackett to explore the economics of the AI-native company. They discuss why engineering teams may soon manage token budgets like P&Ls; how AI enables companies to scale labor up and down almost instantly; and whether the future belongs to smaller, leaner businesses run by people who are unusually good at directing agents. The conversation also covers software-engineering “pod shops,” AI as variable labor, the future of consulting and private equity, and why stablecoins and blockchains may become the default financial infrastructure for AI agents and businesses. Finally, they ask a larger question: If AI has created so much new intelligence, why has it not yet produced an obvious jump in economic growth? And in a world where everyone can access powerful models, will intelligence matter less than grit, judgment, and agency? Highlights 00:00 — Intro 4:01 — Why token spending is starting to resemble headcount 4:51 — Deciding how much spend is too much spend 9:04 — The agentic A/B test: How to quantify "return on tokens" 12:05 — The software-engineering "pod shop" 25:13 — Paying deference to the Machine God 26:06 — The rise (or not) of lean, AI-native microbusinesses 28:05 — Everyone's a manager? The new style of thinking for engineers 30:48 — Why AI agents may naturally use stablecoins 34:33 — When AI productivity will appear in GDP 47:49 — Why grit and agency may matter more than IQ 51:38 — How AI could create new paths for startups 54:53 — Innovation, commoditization, and creative destruction Links: Guy Wuollet: https://x.com/guywuolletjr Noah Citron: https://x.com/noahcitron Robert Hackett: https://x.com/rhackett Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto Website: https://a16zcrypto.com/ X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto Newsletter: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/ 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.
- Jul 24, 202654 min
The Story Behind RSA: The Invention That Secured the Internet (ft. Turing Award Winner Ron Rivest)
Before the internet could become a place to bank or transact, it needed a way for strangers to know who they were talking to, and whether a message could be trusted. Turing Award winners Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman helped invent it. In this episode of First Principles, Rivest tells the story of how they developed RSA, the first practical public-key cryptosystem. Their breakthrough made it possible to encrypt information, verify identities, and authenticate messages across an open network without requiring participants to meet or exchange a secret in advance — laying essential groundwork for the secure internet and, decades later, blockchains. Rivest joins Tim Roughgarden, Head of Research at a16z crypto and Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, and Dan Boneh — Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, a16z crypto Senior Research Advisor, and the “B” in BLS signatures — for a conversation about the origins and future of modern cryptography. They trace the field from its early days, when most cryptographic research was classified and even the meaning of “security” had not been formally defined, through the publication of the Diffie-Hellman paper and the open problem that ultimately led to RSA. Rivest recounts the night the core idea came together, why the difficulty of factoring made the system plausible, and why no one initially knew whether it would survive sustained attempts to break it. The conversation also explores the other cryptographic primitives that underpin blockchains and the modern internet. Rivest explains why digital signatures interested him even more than encryption, how he designed the MD family of cryptographic hash functions, and why standards such as RSA, DSA, and SHA were shaped as much by politics, patents, and government pressure as by mathematics. Finally, Rivest shares his unusually candid views on quantum computing, post-quantum security, and the deeper theoretical possibility that P could equal NP. Either development could threaten the foundations of modern cryptography — but, as Rivest argues, cryptographers have a responsibility to prepare for even the worst-case scenarios. Highlights 00:00 – Intro: the two problems that could break modern cryptography 01:10 – Why Ron Rivest’s work underpins the internet and blockchains 08:10 – Before public-key cryptography, there was no theory of security 11:05 – The open problem that led to RSA 13:55 – The night Ron Rivest discovered the core idea behind RSA 17:55 – Why digital signatures were the real breakthrough 19:14 – The RSA challenge — and a prediction that was off by quadrillions of years 28:33 – How government pressure shaped cryptographic standards 30:36 – Designing the hash functions that made digital signatures practical 33:26 – The Fiat–Shamir transformation, explained 38:04 – Building a cryptography company before the web existed 42:31 – Will quantum computers ever become powerful enough to break RSA? 48:02 – The cryptography securing the internet, elections, and everyday life 50:11 – What surprised Dan: Quantum giveth and quantum taketh away 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: Ron Rivest: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/ Tim Roughgarden: https://twitter.com/Tim_Roughgarden Dan Boneh: https://twitter.com/danboneh Follow a16z crypto: X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcryp
- Jul 17, 20261h 18m
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.
- Jul 14, 20261h 25m
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.
- Jun 25, 202636 min
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.
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About a16z crypto show
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.
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