Crypto founders have a unique challenge in front of them. In addition to building a product that people want, they also need to consider how that product can successfully run in a decentralized manner — that is, as a protocol owned and operated by a community of users.This is a…Read More
I spent the first half of the decade doing overlapping music things:2010 - concert promoter2012- live streaming, SaaS tool2013 - artist managerThe second half doing tech things —specifically, "crypto" (née "blockchain") things2015 - entrepreneur2017 - investing / product / r&d2018 - VCThe through-line is interestingness, at least to me.…Read More
Rather than the distinct eras I posited in a previous post, a better framing of the future of crypto is layers of blockchain computing. This is a model that highlights how diverse architectures lead to specialization and a more dynamic, valuable stack.…Read More
One way to think about various kinds of crypto projects is through the lens of contract theory. An axiom of this area of legal scholarship states: “all but the simplest contracts are incomplete”. That is, contractual arrangements cannot anticipate every possible outcome or set of actions, given complex and dynamic…Read More
Today, some of the most valuable corporations in the world today are “network operators”. Thanks to network effects, these platforms become more valuable to existing users as each new user joins. Network effects are innocuous at first, but can cause concern at scale if platforms enter an “extractive” phase in…Read More
Trustless computing gives developers a new power tool: composibility. It means developers can do more with less. The questions are how and when?…Read More
This post was co-authored with Katie Haun. It pertains to an a16zcrypto investment. The original announcement is here, on our official blog.Cryptocurrencies are borderless, trustless, and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. As such we believe they’ll increasingly be used for a host of financial services in…Read More