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Announcing a16z crypto research
- Liron 5y agoIMO they authentically but wrongly think there's something of value to research, i.e. they drink their own kool-aid. Which means they'll fail to pull their money out at the peak of the bubble, undoing their impressive returns to date.
- boringg 5y agoInteresting take. I agree I think they are authentic in their pursuit. Always make me ever so slightly second guess if there is value they see that the majority of us don't.
- rvz 5y ago> Which means they'll fail to pull their money out at the peak of the bubble, undoing their impressive returns to date. Do you have any concrete evidence to support the claim, that they (a16z) have failed to pulled out and are in a significant loss on their crypto investments? Otherwise this is yet another baseless and unfounded assumption which can be simply dismissed entirely.
- Liron 5y agoHuh? They've already pulled money out and banked a historic return for their fund. In fact one of their partners whose investment thesis is based on publicly-documented logically flimsy claims [0] was #1 on this year's Midas List because he made $3B for his LPs. My point is that since they're drinking their own kool-aid, they're not securing the bag / leaving the poker table right now, a time I believe is close to peak crypto bubble (although the bubble could also plausibly last another 5 years and inflate another 5x). They're Leeroy Jenkinsing another $3.5B right now [1] which I think they're at high risk of losing and tanking the IRR of the combined funds. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664995 [1] https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/20/andreessen-horowitz-looks-to-raise-45b-for-new-crypto-funds-report/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/20/andreessen-horo...
- rvz 5y agoAll your links don't show any "concrete" evidence of a16z failing to pull out and being at a huge loss from their "crypto" investments. The web3 bullshit that they are spreading as mentioned in your article is evidence that they are pumping their own bags and continuing to hype the web3 narrative with their nonsense. But it isn't evidence that they are 'not securing the bag' and just only sitting there in the bubble, nor does it show that they are at a significant loss. They aren't that silly enough to just sit around, hold and not secure the bag in their investments. They (a16z) made it so that in their own crypto investments, they can't lose unless in rare circumstances, even in the event of a hack.
- Liron 5y agoSure, I agree they’ll likely manage to pull a lot of money out and not go too negative even as they drink their own kool-aid and imagine that a valueless speculation bubble is a substantive field of research.
- rvz 5y agoEven if they are 'drinking their own kool-aid' they really don't care, since they already dumped their bags on retail. [0] They know it is a scam. They will keep doing it until stricter regulations prevent them from doing so. Such as working extremely closely with multiple exchanges to simultaneously list the tokens they've invested in and use them to dump on retail as exit liquidity. [0][1] Even if they do get caught, they can pay the SEC a small fine which is nothing more than a slap on the wrist to them from their gains. They (a16z) make money and the SEC makes money. That is why they still win and rarely lose. But retail in almost every case always loses. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012587 [1] https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/07/22126163/polychain-a16z-face-unregistered-security-lawsuit-over-internet-computer-token-sale https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/07/221261...
- Comevius 5y ago"social networks that empower artists and creators (via NFTs)" That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningful art out of conviction, and making a living. "innovation in the space is only accelerating" They mispelled infinite exploitation of people who are greedy or desperate to believe in something. A common mistake. Pushing ticking timebombs on people as investment and fanning the hype machine, if not outright manipulating the markets can be called innovation, but innovation should involve societal gain too. Let me share an example of actual innovation. Imagine if you will a database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted, not having the ability to compromise the data regardless of how curious or malicious the server is. This is a very complicated problem, but it would allow for companies with services like Facebook to not have access to your data, unless you shared it, while still being able to operate the service. You would still have to trust third parties or the government to store your encryption keys, and perhaps to ensure the freshness of your data, there is no such thing as zero trust, but we wouldn't have to trust as many parties. We could create a trust infrastructure every new service can benefit from. This kind of technology would compromise the business model of many companies, but isn't it the goal of Web 3.0 to give ordinary people more control over their lives, their data? I suspect the actual goal of it is to create a use for cryptocurrencies, or maybe find another avenue for growth and exploitation. Don't get me wrong, make as much money as you can, but do something useful. Do something people actually want or need. Don't just wantonly and reclessly exploit them. Create some damn value, something your mama would be proud of.
- TimPC 5y agoYour database technology is interesting but has the problem that there is a legitimate use case for a company having access to at least some of the data on its servers. It is impossible to optimize a service without transparency into what it is providing and which of those results are useful. Companies spend a good deal of time and effort, arguably even over-optimizing for this, but many applications which don't do it at all are crap. Any product based on this technology lacks the data to do any form of recommendations and most services these days consider recommendations an essential component.
- datalopers 5y agoTim Roughgarden is an excellent choice. His materials and lectures focus on the actual math, science, and utility of cryptocurrencies with none of the bullshit hype.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoScience-washing a gigantic pump and dump.
- tzumby 5y agoIt's great to see respected cryptographers like Dan Boneh behind stuff like this.
- randomhodler84 5y agoAnd Joseph Bonneau! Hard hitting team of quality math wizards
- hsavit1 5y agoI have lost respect for anyone involved with a16z at this point
- FabHK 5y agoExcept that it doesn't make me any more optimistic that the "Cryptography II" MOOC will come out anytime soon....
- randomhodler84 5y agoThis is an absolutely killer team. Congrats to a16z.
- jdrc 5y agoWhat kind of research is needed in cryptochains?
- sillyinseattle 5y agoVery wide range. On the cryptography side: new signature schemes, cryptographic proof systems. Research on voting systems, economic incentive design, coordination and trust problems with value transfers (bridges) across different chains, VM + compiler design for smart contract execution
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoall things crypto has been pretending to work on for more than a decade while riding the work of an individual research paper from the 1970s which explained, at the end of the paper, why this should never be used for money y'all some junior koch brothers
- shafyy 5y agoNone. They are noticing the NFT hype starting to die down, and now need to keep the ferris wheel running with something. Crypto is only marketing, there is no actual value created.
- firloop 5y agoClearly a response to Paradigm funding much of the best crypto research. Hoping that, like Paradigm’s efforts, this actually leads to meaningful new research and public goods.
- fuddle 5y agoI'm a big fan of the work Paradigm is doing. Foundry is a great project: https://book.getfoundry.sh/ https://book.getfoundry.sh/ It makes sense for them to create these open source tools if it can improve the development productivity of their portfolio companies.
- asasidh 5y ago"research" is a way to fund a PR machine to legitimize the scams they fund in the first place.
- Kalanos 5y agoPlease work with David Recordon to make anonymous blockchain-enabled voting happen. It puts the tamperproof feature to work, and there are some measures in place for voting that help ensure the data being placed on the blockchain is actually authentic. Maybe the press too EDIT: would love to hear opposing downvoting views. our votes are already digital and tamperable
- ekr____ 5y agoDo you mean on HN or in real elections? In real elections, the situation is actually quite complicated depending on where you live. Specifically: - Many people vote on paper with hand counting, which is of course not digital. - Many people vote on paper with machine counting, which is straightforwardly auditable. - Many people vote on Direct Recording Electronic (touchscreen) machines. Some of these have paper trails which can be audited and some do not. Some background here on conventional voting systems: https://educatedguesswork.org/tags/voting/ https://educatedguesswork.org/tags/voting/ There has been quite a bit of work on cryptographic voting, but the blockchain feature doesn't really help that much, because the votes are signed and there is a public record of who voted and who did not. The complicated piece is ensuring the votes haven't been tampered with while keeping them secret, but again, the blockchain doesn't help here. The deployment problems around cryptographic voting are largely about endpoint security and user comprehension of what's happening.
- Kalanos 5y ago"vote on paper with hand counting" how is the sum communicated and stored?
- RandomLensman 5y agoBy phone and on paper, for example. Depending on which country you are in, these systems are very robust and difficult to tamper, as granular results are published and counting is decentralized. And here's the kicker: where I live, people can get pretty randomly drafted into counting and support duty for election day, i.e., not easy to insert enough malicious actors into those emptying the boxes, counting the ballots etc.
- sillyinseattle 5y agoOutstanding researchers and educators! But a "founding research team"? Are they leaving their day jobs for this? Don't think so.
- clpm4j 5y agoThey're cashing in. I'm sure they're both well paid by Stanford and Columbia, but they have the opportunity to makes 10s or 100s of millions of dollars through a16z.
- Barrin92 5y agoI'd be better if more resources, attention and research were dedicated to decentralization technologies like ActivityPub, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid (trying to rescue some ideas of the Semantic Web), or even their eldritch cousin Urbit. because all of those have the benefit of not trying to ram random things through a global state machine with the computational capacity of a microwave so people can make billions of dollars selling DeviantArt pictures of monkeys.
- FridgeSeal 5y agoThis is the funniest and most succinct definition of crypto things I’ve seen. Definitely going to borrow that analogy. If we continue the analogy, crypto fans usually respond by asserting that the problem will be solved any day now by making the platter spin faster and having 30 new defrost modes, but at the end of the day, it’s still just a souped up microwave.
- thesausageking 5y agoa16z have pumped and dumped dozens of crypto projects, often with retail investors getting screwed over. They the main investors behind the "Internet Computer" (ICP) project which was dumped on retail at $450 and then crashed to $30 weeks later and never recovered. a16z partner Chris Dixon promoted it to retail investors, saying "The Internet Computer is on track to become a critical piece of the future technology stack. This is groundbreaking." https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/internet-computer https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/internet-computer Any crypto "research" group they're doing is to whitewash all of the shady projects they're profiting from.
- cagr 5y agoIt's Chris Dixon's job to pump and dump bags on retail investors. I've muted his account on Twitter.
- memish 5y agoIs there evidence they dumped their share?
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoyes. tons. go look.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ryloric 5y agoAren't they afraid of reputational damage? Once this whole thing collapses, everyone will know what they did. There's going to be bad blood type bestsellers on this phenomenon. It's very strange to me that they don't seem to care about it, I thought VC is all about reputation, image and connections. If their LPs think they're a fraud how can they ever raise another fund ever again?
- mmastrac 5y agoI thought wasting the smartest brains on adtech was bad, but it seems like we're at the point of capital chasing _any_ old fad now.
- boringg 5y agoLet me add my 2 cents. I thought wasting some of our smarter brains (smartest didn't fall for the bait) on ad tech and business school (to consulting sweatshops and now product managers) was bad but it seems like we're at the point of capital chasing _any_ old fad now.
- mmastrac 5y agoFair enough!
- boringg 5y agoSo is this a16z realizing that they made a huge bet on crypto and it isn't playing out like they wanted it to? Has anyone else noticed that Andreessen on twitter has really gone a different direction? I thought his commentary was normally pretty buttoned up and interesting but it seems almost strictly inflammatory these days. Maybe he was like this all along and I never noticed. Still like hearing him talk though - even if I don't agree with everything he says.
- endisneigh 5y agoWhy doesn’t anyone make a legal application or service that exclusively uses crypto?
- skywhopper 5y ago“What makes [blockchains] unique, however, is that they allow developers to write code that makes strong commitments about how that code will behave in the future. It is that property that makes it possible for Bitcoin to guarantee that there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins.“ This is either a really bad misunderstanding of how Bitcoin works or it’s just a blatant lie. The parameters of the Bitcoin mining algorithm can be adjusted if the mining community chooses to. There is nothing about the technology that mandates “how that code will behave in the future”.
- rudiger 5y agoThe mining community cannot change how Bitcoin works. Even if 100% of miners were to change their validation logic to accept more than 21 million bitcoins, none of the nodes running the Bitcoin software will accept the change. Bitcoin is governed by the nodes running the software, not by the source code.
- jeffbee 5y agoYou might say that the definition of and value of bitcoins are determined only by collective understanding, governed by the participants in the system, and that it is backed by faith in that collective governance, and will fall apart if that faith falters, or if the collective illusion underlying bitcoin collapses. Is that starting to sound like another currency you've heard about?
- FabHK 5y agoCan you expand on that, and correct my thinking here? Say, 95% of hash power (so, the top 5-10 of mining pools) change their validation logic, but, yay, none of the non-mining nodes (and the good 5% miners) accept the change. Then we effectively have a hard fork, no? The bad miners can trivially add more nodes, which will accept the change. The good nodes won't. Good miners keep mining. But suppose the bad miners go rogue just after a difficulty adjustment. So, then the good nodes (with 5% hash power) can emit a block around only every 3 hours (200 minutes), and it will take around 2x20=40 weeks to adjust the difficulty (unless, of course... they conspire to change that. Why not?). The bad miners, meanwhile, can keep mining with their rogue version, and occasionally divert a small fraction of their mining power to mess with the good nodes (double spend, make a "longer chain" with no transactions inside, or whatever). The defence I see against that scenario is not the code or the crypto or the nodes, but the fact that they'd probably kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Or maybe not: maybe both chains together are more valuable than the old one alone! Maybe they should give it a try.
- exdsq 5y agoI can't wait for another series of fruitful discussions HN has on front-page crypto articles! It's great how people discuss the article itself and not pre-conceived prejudices for/against this topic in general.
- version_five 5y agoThis is approaching the end game of what happens when "deep tech" or "business translator" types that have no actual technical education but "get it" because they understand a parable or analogy about something get too much away. It's almost like a vertical integration to be able to control the whole value chain of BS instead of having to find legit sources to cite. Somehow this has shades of Enron or Theranos, where a non-specialist's misconception of an idea results in a gigantic scam. In some ways, at least those people are mostly just genuinely ignorant. The folks like the faculty they have lined up presumably know better, but are still going along with it.
- bspear 5y agoAnother day, another A16Z announcement
- labrador 5y agoThe company I worked for in 2000 got hooked up with Enron and the VP of Engineering, a man of middling talent, became obsessed with taking this windfall from Enron and making his mark in the world. He began dreaming of all kinds of big projects with the cash, except he didn't involve me or some of the engineers because he knew we would shoot down his ideas. He wanted to be a big player in Web1. He grabbed some mediocre engineers who he could bedazzle to implement his big designs. I got bored with nothing to do and quit. Right after I left it all came crashing down. Web2 rose from the ashes and it was good. I'm feeling the same vibes now, so I'll wait for Web4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/ https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/
- rajman187 5y agoBlockchain Biotech makes me imagine a CryptoShkreli, a bleak future indeed