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a16z Kicks Off Crypto Research Lab Led by Columbia, Stanford Professors

By:
Sujha Sundararajan
Updated: Apr 22, 2022, 15:01 UTC

The new crypto academic lab will tackle research problems in the web3 space, spearheaded by Tim Roughgarden, faculty from Columbia and Stanford.

Web3

Key Insights:

  • Andreessen Horowitz is building a dedicated crypto research lab.
  • Professors from Columbia and Stanford will lead the team to address the hardest problems in web3.
  • The lab will work closely with its portfolio companies to solve important issues in the crypto space.

Andreessen Horowitz, after accelerating its push into the metaverse, now wants to solve “some of the hardest problems in web3.”

a16z Forms Crypto Research Unit

Venture capital giant a16z on Thursday announced that it is deep-diving into the crypto space with the launch of a new crypto research unit.

Dubbed a16z Crypto Research, the unit will bring researchers from top US universities to tackle issues and risks in web3 and the crypto space. The team will be spearheaded by Tim Roughgarden, a professor at Columbia and Stanford who has written extensively on Web3.

The VC noted that the research lab is modeled after AI-powered OpenAI and Alphabet’s DeepMind.

“we’re excited to announce the creation of a16z crypto research, a new kind of multidisciplinary lab that will work closely with our portfolio and others toward solving the important problems in the space and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet.”

Why Web3?

Andreessen Horowitz has just begun exploring the web3, or what it calls an “extremely rich design space for innovation.”

New entrepreneurial applications in the web3 space have uncovered fresh research challenges and questions such as how the computational infrastructure will scale and evolve and how token incentives in protocols should be structured.

The crypto-dedicated academic unit aims to address such problems by, for instance, developing new tools that would help its portfolio companies grow their businesses.

Joining the founding board are Harvard’s Scott Duke Kominers, Meta’s Valeria Nikolaenko, author Joseph Bonneau and researcher Benedikt Bünz.

Investment firm Paradigm has built a similar strategy. For instance, Rick and Morty animated series creator, worked with Paradigm on a new NFT sales mechanism. 

According to Ali Yahya, the general partner at a16z,

“So many people in this space claim to have research, and I think a big difference here is that this is ‘capital R’ research, and it connects basically world-class talent at the scientific academic level, with world-class talent at the engineering level, with the best and most interesting problems in the space through the portfolio.”

About the Author

Sujha Sundararajan is a writer-journalist with 7+ years of experience in Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and in general, FinTech news reporting. Her articles have featured in multiple journals such as CoinDesk, Protos, Bitcoin Magazine, CCN, Asia Blockchain Review, BeInCrypto and EconoTimes to name a few. She holds a Master’s in Journalism from the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media and is also an accomplished Indian classical singer.

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