a16z crypto show

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 

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*** 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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: 

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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.

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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

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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.

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