a16z crypto
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Videos
Crypto is at a pivotal moment. As Congress debates landmark market structure legislation, Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon discuss the decisions that could shape where the next generation of financial infrastructure is built, and whether the United States remains the global leader in crypto innovation: 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 Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 Chris Dixon Robert Hackett
a16z crypto872,091 views • 1 month ago
Can a sufficiently powerful quantum computer forge the signatures used to authorize Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions? What would it take to upgrade both networks before that happens? In this new lecture, Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh explores why blockchains may turn to signatures built from hash functions. He also presents new research on threshold signing. The talk ends with the questions Bitcoin still has to answer, including whether post-quantum signatures will require larger blocks, what happens to abandoned coins, and how someone such as Satoshi could prove ownership after Bitcoin’s current signatures have been retired. 00:00 Why blockchains need to prepare for quantum computers 03:05 Why Bitcoin may bet on hash-based signatures 06:25 The “big footgun” in stateful signatures 08:58 A quantum-safe signature that takes one billion hashes 14:13 Inside SLH-DSA’s virtual tree 20:30 How Bitcoin and Ethereum could make the switch 23:48 What happens when a wallet loses its state? 32:47 Can threshold signing survive the quantum transition? 36:39 How to hide lattice cryptography from the blockchain 38:49 Why threshold one-time signatures seem impossible 45:36 How context prevents forged signatures 49:37 The forgotten idea behind Winternitz signatures 54:50 Turning one-time signatures into threshold signatures 1:04:27 Will quantum-safe signatures require bigger Bitcoin blocks? 1:06:26 Abandoned bitcoin and Satoshi’s recovery problem
a16z crypto115,401 views • 7 days ago
A handful of ideas hold up the entire digital world, but most of us never learn where they came from. So we went to the source: the people who solved these problems, and won Turing Awards and Nobel Prizes for it. First Principles, hosted by Tim Roughgarden. First episode out now.
a16z crypto658,012 views • 2 months ago
First Principles Ep. 6 with Shafi Goldwasser What if you could prove something is true without revealing why it’s true? Turing Award winner Shafi Goldwasser tells the origin story of zero-knowledge proofs: how a playful question about playing poker securely over the telephone led her, Silvio Micali, and Charles Rackoff to rethink what a mathematical proof could be. Goldwasser traces those ideas through interactive proofs, the sum-check protocol, SNARKs, and the systems now used to verify computation and preserve privacy on blockchains. She also reflects on why breakthrough ideas are often rejected at first, how toy problems can produce foundational theories, and whether AI systems should have to prove their answers. Hosted by Tim Roughgarden with Justin Thaler 00:00 Intro 03:36 How mental poker inspired zero-knowledge proofs: Proving that something is true without revealing the underlying information 06:30 The simulation paradigm and the meaning of “zero knowledge” 08:33 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
a16z crypto195,753 views • 25 days ago
First Principles Ep. 7 with Noam Nisan More than 30 years ago, Gödel Prize winner Noam Nisan helped develop a proof technique he never expected anyone to use in the real world. Today, the sum-check protocol sits at the heart of some of the fastest modern SNARKs. Nisan traces its unlikely journey from early work on interactive proofs and IP = PSPACE to practical systems for verifiable computation. 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. Hosted by Tim Roughgarden with Justin Thaler 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?
a16z crypto56,326 views • 20 days ago
First Principles Ep. 4 with Alvin Roth Long before crypto made coordination programmable, Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth was designing markets where coordination could save lives, matching doctors to hospitals, students to schools, and kidney donors to the patients who need them. 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. Hosted by Tim Roughgarden with Scott Kominers. 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
a16z crypto127,299 views • 1 month ago
Marc Andreessen: “We need a stable, permanent regulatory structure for crypto in the US.” “We need it so that it doesn’t result in more FTXs. And we need it so that people’s money doesn’t get stolen.” “We’re not looking for a free lunch. We’re not looking for subsidies. We’re not looking for protectionism. We’re just looking for a basically permanent framework that lets people do business in a responsible way.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on why the US needs the kind of permanent crypto framework the CLARITY Act would create.
a16z crypto69,608 views • 1 month ago
What happens when intelligence becomes a line item? 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 changes the economics of building a company. It could reshape how companies form, how teams are managed, how businesses are financed, and who is best positioned to build them. a16z crypto General Partner Guy Wuollet and Head of Engineering ncitron.eth join Robert Hackett to explore why engineering leaders may soon manage token budgets like P&Ls, the emergence of software-engineering “pod shops”; and whether the future belongs to smaller, leaner businesses run by people who are unusually good at directing agents. They also ask why AI agents may naturally transact using stablecoins, and confront a larger question: If AI has created so much new intelligence, why hasn’t it 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? 0:00 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
a16z crypto59,535 views • 1 month ago
"It's a wonderful time to be a pragmatist building onchain." Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, Eddy Lazzarin, and Guy Wuollet on Crypto Fund 5, where crypto is right now, and where it's heading next. 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 Chris Dixon Eddy Lazzarin ☀️ Guy Wuollet Robert Hackett
a16z crypto171,826 views • 3 months ago
First Principles Ep. 6 with Ron Rivest Long before the internet became a place to bank, transact, or build blockchains, Turing Award winner Ron Rivest helped solve a foundational problem: how can strangers communicate securely without first meeting to exchange a secret? Rivest tells the story of inventing RSA with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, why digital signatures fascinated him even more than encryption, and how cryptographic hashes, government pressure, patents, and standards shaped the security infrastructure we rely on today. Rivest shares his unusually candid views on quantum computing, post-quantum security, and more. Hosted by Tim Roughgarden with Dan Boneh. 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
a16z crypto62,339 views • 1 month ago
First Principles Ep. 1 Bitcoin gets credited with inventing trustless consensus. It didn’t. The problem was named in the 1980s, and it took the research world years to even notice Satoshi had solved it. A new series hosted by Tim Roughgarden, with Ittai Abraham. 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 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
a16z crypto97,769 views • 2 months ago
“You’ve just been told you have superpowers.” AI agents are starting to feel like coworkers. The cost of automation is collapsing. So what happens to jobs? To startups? To crypto? We break down the new paper “Some Simple Economics of AGI” with coauthor Christian Catalini, including: • Why verification becomes the bottleneck • Practical advice for early- and late-career builders • The risk of a hollow economy, and the path to an augmented one • Why crypto may be essential infrastructure for identity, provenance, and trust In conversation with Eddy Lazzarin ☀️ and Robert Hackett. Full episode ↓
a16z crypto205,807 views • 6 months ago
What happens when the CLARITY Act passes? Collin McCune points to the “absolute explosion of activity” following stablecoin legislation: “The most important thing that people miss about why clarity is so important is: It is a signal.” “It’s a signal that America is here, and they’ve made a long-term decision.” Milk Road
a16z crypto51,231 views • 1 month ago