Bridge Hack, Wallet Hack

with @cdixon @pmarca @bhorowitz @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z podcast. Today's episode is the final installment in our limited series on Read Write Own, the new book by a16z crypto founding partner Chris Dixon. Today's episode features Dixon in conversation with a16z cofounders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen. Their discussion covers the internet’s corporate takeover and how that affects startups, creativity, and innovation; blockchains as inheritors of the open source ethos; where AI comes in; and the next battleground in global politics. This episode is a crossover from the Ben & Marc Show, which you can find and follow on the a16z YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources for references in this episode:

• "How an economic moat provides a competitive advantage" by Chris Gallant (Investopedia, August 2023)
• "The dynamics of network effects" by D'Arcy Coolican and Li Jin (a16z, December 2018)
• "Skeuomorphism" (Interaction Design Foundation)
• "How to rebuild social media on top of RSS" (Hacker News, December 2022)
• "Cardinal conversations: Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel on 'technology and politics'" (Hoover Institute, January 2018) [see @ 29:00]
• "Peter Thiel: AI is communist" by Dan Primack (Axios, February 2018)
• "Sam Altman seeks trillions of dollars to reshape business of chips and AI" by Keach Hagey and Asa Fitch (Wall Street Journal, February 2024)
• "Join a union—but also join a DAO" by Daisy Alioto (The Nation, December 2021)
• Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto by Aaron Bastani (Verso, June 2019)
• "Friedrich Hayek and the price system" by Randal K. Quarles ("The Road to Serfdom at 75" conference, November 2019)
• Pandora's Box: A Fable from the Age of Science "Part 1. The Engineers' Plot" by Adam Curtis (BBC, June 1992) [see @ 25:00]
• "Going from web2 to web3: 'Your take rate is my opportunity'" by Chris Dixon (a16z crypto, August 2021)
• "Blockchain & internet glossary (A–Z): Key terms from Read Write Own" by Chris Dixon and Robert Hackett (a16z crypto, February 2024)
• "Why decentralization matters" by Chris Dixon (a16z crypto, February 2018)
• "The Vision Pro needs apps. Now is not a good time for Apple to be at odds with developers" by Hasan Chowdhury (Business Insider, January 2024)
• "Upgrading Ethereum | 4.2.5 Deneb" by Ben Edgington (Eth2book, September 2023)
• "What to expect from Ethereum's Cancun-Deneb Upgrade" by Wilfred Daye (Coindesk, February 2024)
• "Bitcoin Obituaries" (99 Bitcoins)
• "An Overview of H.R. 4766, Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act" by Paul Tierno and Andrew P. Scott (Congressional Research Service, September 2023)
• "The Rings of Power" (The Lord of the Rings Wiki)
• "There's no downplaying the impact of Operation Choke Point" by Dennis Shaul (American Banker, November 2018)
• "Operation Choke Point 2.0: The Federal Bank Regulators Come for Crypto" by David H. Thompson, et al. (Cooper & Kirk Lawyers, March 2023)
• "Google Chatbot’s A.I. Images Put People of Color in Nazi-Era Uniforms" by Nico Grant (New York Times, February 2024)
• "This is Worldcoin: Humanness in the age of AI" (Worldcoin, February 2024)
• The Blocksize War: The Battle for Control Over Bitcoin's Protocol Rules by Jonathan Bier (Amazon, March 2021)
• "Balaji Srinivasan: The Bitcoin Network State" (Bitcoin Magazine, October 2023)

with @stevenbjohnson @cdixon @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z crypto podcast. Today's episode features a conversation between Steven Johnson, a prolific author of books about technology and innovation who is also, as editorial director at Google Labs, helping to develop AI writing tools such as NotebookLM, and Chris Dixon, founding partner of a16z crypto and author of the new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. The two discuss the history of their shared interests, they explore the emergent properties of decentralized networks, and they dig into the past, present, and future of the internet.

Resources for references in this episode:

• Author page for Steven Johnson
• Google Labs's personalized AI writing tool NotebookLM
• "Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble" by Steven Johnson (New York Times Magazine, January 2018)
• How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books: 2015)
• Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, And History's First Global Manhunt by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books: 2021)
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson (Sribner: 2002)
• Chris Dixon's blog at cdixon.org
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (Random House: 1961)
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (Vintage: 1975)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (Basic Books: 2000)
• "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlow
• "1000 True Fans" by Kevin Kelly
• Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (W.W. Norton: 2022)
• ReadWriteWeb blog (ca. 2003)
• "Airbnb Proposes Giving Hosts a Stake in the Company" by Aisha Al-Muslim and Maureen Farrell (Wall Street Journal, September 2018)
• "Lyft Unlikely to Get SEC Pushback on Plan for Two Share Classes" by Nabila Ahmed and Ben Bain (Bloomberg, March 2019)
• "OpenAI Says New York Times Lawsuit Against It Is Without Merit" by Cade Metz (New York Times, January 2024)

with @cdixon @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z crypto podcast. I'm Robert Hackett, an editor here at a16z crypto, and I'm here with Chris Dixon, founding partner of a16z crypto and author of the new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet.  I had the privilege of editing Chris throughout the book writing process, and I'm thrilled now to talk to you about what went on behind the scenes, the big themes of the book, the challenges, and also about the crypto industry at large as well as what we can expect from it in the future.

Learn more at https://readwriteown.com/.

Resources for references in this episode:

• Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse
• "'It's a canon event' TikTok trend, explained"
• Chris Dixon's blog at cdixon.org
  • "Come for the tool, stay for the network"
  • "The next big thing starts out looking like a toy"
  • "Can't be evil"
• The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
  • On Andrew Chen's writing habits
• On investing in Coinbase in 2013
• Guidance from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in 2019: "Framework for 'Investment Contract' Analysis of Digital Assets"
• On blockchains as "a programmable computer that lives in the sky" via a16z crypto head of research Tim Roughgarden
• Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstader
• "How Aristotle Created the Computer" by Chris Dixon for The Atlantic
• "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" by Claude Shannon
• Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead
• An Investigation of the Laws of Thought by George Boole
• The End of Education by Neil Postman
• "Inside out vs. outside in: The adoption of new technologies" by Chris Dixon
• "The Inevitable Showdown Between Twitter and Twitter Apps" by Chris Dixon
• "Elon Musk says X is discouraging links in posts" by Sara Fischer
• "Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again" by Vitalik Buterin
• "What Will Happen in 2024" by Fred Wilson
• "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by McCullough and Pitts
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
• On "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis" and Hegel's Dialectics

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

Welcome back to web3 with a16z -- a show about building the next generation of the internet, from the team at a16z crypto. This show is for anyone -- whether company leader or other entrepreneur, creator or developer, media or policymaker -- seeking to understand, and go deeper on all things blockchains, crypto, and web3. We’re back with all new episodes this season, beginning with some conversations that took place at our recent Founders Summit. 

Today's guest is Jonathan Dotan, tech founder, Emmy-nominated producer, and writer who spent six seasons on HBO's show Silicon Valley. He is also the founding director of The Starling Lab for Data Integrity at Stanford & USC -- which prototypes tools and principles to bring historians, legal experts, and journalists into the new era of web3 -- and where he leads applied research on the decentralized web and human rights.  

This episode is based on a conversation that took place at our recent second annual Founders Summit -- with a16z crypto's Robert Hackett (also former senior writer at Fortune) -- in which they discuss how cryptographic technologies can help establish "ground truth" in conflict zones; the history of open source regulation; and more. 

Dotan is also a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Blockchain Research and a lecturer at Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate School of Business. This talk was preceded by a short presentation from Dotan on the "enduring promise of web3" delivered at our second annual a16z crypto Founder Summit in November 2023, which you can watch on YouTube. 
 

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

with @smc90 @stanfordgsb 

How does one *communicate* well -- especially in crypto, but also in other technical industries or open source communities? Or in distributed, decentralized organizations, where you may have participants that are both remote and in person, or a mix of regulars and newcomers/ strangers.  (Take for instance a community call to discuss technical or governance changes.) 

How do you present information to different types of stakeholders; speak spontaneously; or resolve and recover from conflicts on the spot? So in this special book-launch episode of web3 with a16z, we invited  Matt Abrahams -- author of the new, just-released book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot (he also hosts a popular podcast by a similar name, “Think Fast Talk Smart”, which you should also subscribe to!). Matt is not only a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, but he works with lots of companies and leaders on strategic communication, persuasive communication, interpersonal communication, and much more.

In this episode, Matt covers --  in conversation with host Sonal Chokshi -- specific templates, tactics, and tools that anyone can use; but we begin the first 15 minutes setting some foundational context, including the difference between informal vs. formal communication; why structure matters and how it relates to "spontaneity";  the art of listening with pace, space, and grace (for listening to oneself, too). We then cover several types of structures that anyone -- whether leader or individual contributor, engineer, marketing, sales -- can use in many types of communication. 

Ultimately, crypto isn't just about technology and code -- but about open source, decentralization, collaboration -- people coordinating with each other at unprecedented scale: a very human thing. That's why finding the "common" in communication is essential, and represents the future of work, now. 

resources referenced in this episode:

• How to Moderate Talks, Panels, Meetings, and More (Virtual and Beyond!), a16z Podcast, November 2020 -- with Matt Abrahams and Sonal Chokshi
• Ethereum, Merge and Beyond, web3 with a16z podcast, September 2022 -- with Tim Beiko et al

None of the following should be taken as investment, legal, business, or tax advice. Please also see a16z.com/disclosures for important information -- including a link to a list of our investments -- since we are investors in some of the companies mentioned in this episode.
 

with @guywuolletjr @eddylazzarin @smc90

"Which blockchain should I build in?" Is a very top of mind question for builders in web3, including  for people coming into the space for the first time -- but also relevant to anyone interested in tech innovation, tech stacks, and the evolution of infrastructure. So how does one decide among all the chain choices out there, particularly given how fast-moving the crypto and web3 space is? Things are constantly changing, things are still being built, and there's no one size fits all answer...

So in this episode, we -- a16z crypto’s Guy Wuollet, and CTO Eddy Lazzarin, in conversation with host Sonal Chokshi -- tease apart all the tangled threads and nuances of the topic. In the first third of the discussion, we sketch out the overall landscape, why it matters, quick definitions. Then, we focus on common/ frequently asked questions, specific tradeoffs, and a framework for deciding which chain -- including discussing different technical specs, as well as other dimensions such as: community, marketing & ecosystem support, security, custody, programming languages, and much, much more.
 

resources related to or mentioned in this episode:

• Programming Languages & Crypto (2023) with Sam Blackshear, Eddy Lazzarin, Noah Citron, Sonal Chokshi
• The Four Horsemen of Centralization (2018) by Ali Yahya
• Decentralization for web3 Builders: Principles, Models, How (2022) by Miles Jennings
• Network Effects, Origin Stories, and the Evolution of Tech (2018), with Brian Arthur, Marc Andreessen, and Sonal Chokshi  [see also this paper referenced]

None of the following should be taken as investment, legal, business, or tax advice. Please also see a16z.com/disclosures for important information -- including a link to a list of our investments -- since we are investors in some of the companies mentioned in this episode.
 

with @aeyakovenko @alive_eth @guywuolletjr @smc90

This all-new deep-dive, hallway-style chat features a16z crypto general partner Ali Yahya and deal team partner Guy Wuollet, in conversation with Solana co-founder and Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko --  who also worked at Qualcomm for over a decade, where he was a senior engineer and engineering manager among other things. 

The first half of the episode is a discussion/ debate blockchain architectures -- including of course Solana & Ethereum, the themes of monolithic vs. modular, et cetera -- but really is about what are the tradeoffs, and what should one optimize for (or not!), depending on what you’re building, and to make crypto happen at scale (now and in the future). 

The second half of the episode covers company-, community-, and ecosystem-building -- including discussing the nuances of leadership in open source; and wherefore messiahs/ prophets?! -- as well as touching on engineering hiring, devrel (developer relations), governance; the Solana phone, and some of the Solana backstory as well. 

What are the differences between hardware and software innovation? And how does innovation play out, in theory versus practice? These are the throughlines of this episode... 

For more on some of the topics discussed, see also: 

• a high-level overview of topics including VDFs, defined (with Joe Bonneau)
• resources on all things VDFs /verifiable delay functions on a16zcrypto.com, including:
• an introduction to verifiable delay functions (from a16z crypto research partner Joe Bonneau)
• our episode on AI & crypto (with Ali Yahya)
• our discussion on the evolution of programming languages & crypto (including Move's Sam Blackshear)

As a reminder: none of this 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 @davidmarcus @smc90

This wide-ranging conversation covers company building, big to small -- including what cadence and when is the right "time" to ship; the relationship between centralization, decentralization, platforms, and financial freedom; moving from web2 to web3 in both crypto AND payments... as well as why bitcoin, views on remote work, and much much more. 

Our guest is David Marcus, CEO and co-founder of Lightspark; Marcus was also a co-creator of Diem (aka Libra and Novi, the cryptocurrency project initiated by Facebook). Before that, he was vice president of messaging products there, where he ran the Facebook Messenger unit; and prior to joining Facebook, Marcus was the former president of PayPal (which had acquired his previous startup).  

This episode begins with an interview just to help kick things off and then features a rich set of questions from the audience -- as this originally took place live on stage at our Crypto Startup School 2023. 

As a reminder: none of this 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.

related readings:

• Regulate apps, not protocols series (2022-2023) - Miles Jennings et al, a16z crypto)
• What it will take to create the next great Silicon Valleys (2014) - Marc Andreessen (Politico, a16z)
• Why bitcoin matters (2014) - Marc Andreeessen (NYT, a16z) 
• When one app rules them all: The case of WeChat and Mobile in China (2015) - Connie Chan (a16z) 
   

with @alive_eth @danboneh @smc90

This week's all-new episode covers the convergence of two important, very top-of-mind trends: AI (artificial intelligence) & blockchains/ crypto. These domains together have major implications for how we all live our lives everyday; so this episode is for anyone just curious about, or already building in the space. 

The conversation covers topics ranging from deep fakes, bots, and the need for proof-of-humanity in a world of AI; to big data, large language models like ChatGPT, user control, governance, privacy and security, zero knowledge and zkML; to MEV, media, art, and much more. Our expert guests (in conversation with host Sonal Chokshi) include: 

• Dan Boneh, Stanford Professor (and Senior Research Advisor at a16z crypto), a cryptographer who’s been working on blockchains for over a decade and who specializes in cryptography, computer security, and machine learning -- all of which intersect in this episode;
• Ali Yahya, general partner at a16z crypto, who also previously worked at Google -- where he not only worked on a distributed system for a fleet of robots (a sort of "collective reinforcement learning") but also worked on Google Brain, where he was one of the core contributors to the machine learning library TensorFlow built at Google.

The first half of the hallway-style conversation between Ali & Dan (who go back together as student and professor at Stanford) is all about how AI could benefit from crypto, and the second half on how crypto could benefit from AI... the thread throughout is the tension between centralization vs. decentralization.  So we also discuss where the intersection of crypto and AI can bring about things that aren't possible by either one of them alone...

pieces referenced in this episode/ related reading:

• The Next Cyber Reasoning System for Cyber Security (2023) by Mohamed Ferrag, Ammar Battah, Norbert Tihanyi, Merouane Debbah, Thierry Lestable, Lucas Cordeiro
• A New Era in Software Security: Towards Self-Healing Software via Large Language Models and Formal Verification (2023) by  Yiannis Charalambous, Norbert Tihanyi, Ridhi Jain, Youcheng Sun, Mohamed Ferrag, Lucas Cordeiro
• Fixing Hardware Security Bugs with Large Language Models (2023) by Baleegh Ahmad, Shailja Thakur, Benjamin Tan, Ramesh Karri, Hammond Pearce
• Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants? (2022) by Neil Perry, Megha Srivastava, Deepak Kumar, Dan Boneh
• Asleep at the Keyboard? Assessing the Security of GitHub Copilot's Code Contributions (2021) by Hammond Pearce, Baleegh Ahmad, Benjamin Tan, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, Ramesh Karri
• Voting, Security, and Governance in Blockchains (2019) with Ali Yahya and Phil Daian   
   

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 to a link to a list of our investments – especially since we are investors in companies mentioned in this episode.

with @mclader @smc90 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Uniswap Labs COO Mary Catherine (aka MC) Lader discusses the challenges -- and opportunities -- of decentralized finance (DeFi); business strategy (& competition) in a world of open source; product vs. protocol innovation... as well as organizational structure & collaboration, hiring, metrics, community engagement, app store policies, decentralization, and much, much more. 

The conversation -- based on an interview with host Sonal Chokshi and founder Q&A live from a16z crypto Startup School earlier this year -- also covers how to make decisions on what to innovate on or not; how to move from  idea and vision to business; and the transition overall from traditional finance/ tradfi. Before joining Uniswap Labs (which contributes to Uniswap, a protocol for trading and automated liquidity provision on Ethereum) -- Lader was a managing director at BlackRock (and chief operating officer of the firm’s digital wealth business and head of its climate tech business); was formerly a fintech entrepreneur; and began her career as an investment analyst at Goldman Sachs. 

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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.