More About Ali
Ali Yahya is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he invests in crypto. Ali works with numerous portfolio companies, including Alchemy, Aleo, Aztec, EigenLayer, Espresso, Gensyn, LayerZero, Solana, Sound.xyz, XMTP, and zkSync.
Before Andreessen Horowitz, he was a software engineer and researcher at Google X, where he worked on the Everyday Robot project, which aims to build a robot that is smart and affordable enough to be viable as a consumer product for the home. He also worked at Google Brain, Google’s Artificial Intelligence lab, where he was a core developer on TensorFlow, Google’s primary library for machine learning.
Ali began his career as a student and researcher at Stanford University, where he focused on the intersection of Computer Security, Distributed Systems, and Computer Networking. He first discovered the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2010 while doing research at Stanford Computer Security Lab, and has followed the space closely ever since.
Latest Content
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Daylight is building a decentralized protocol to fund and coordinate distributed energy resources.
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We’re excited to partner with the Espresso team to help bring to life a more seamless and interoperable future for Ethereum.
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It's a pleasure to announce that we're leading EigenLayer's Series B. We're excited to partner with founder Sreeram Kannan and the whole team on building a platform that unlocks a new dimension of open innovation on top of Ethereum.
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A list of crypto and web3 trends for 2024 including the intersection of AI & blockchains, AI & gaming, play to earn games, NFTs, SNARKs, more
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A blockchain architectures debate including the tradeoffs, and what should one optimize for (or not!), depending on what you’re building.
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A podcast episode on the convergence of two important technologies: artificial intelligence and blockchains/crypto.
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In this crossover episode from new show "web3 with a16z", a16z general partners Chris Dixon and Ali Yahya and a16z crypto head of research Tim Roughgarden, with host Sonal Choksi, set context and discuss the connections between blockchain, crypto, and web3, as well as how lessons from earlier eras of the web do and don't apply to the current moment.
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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.
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A common complaint about the internet – in both web2 and web3 – is that privacy is an elusive privilege and not viewed as a priority in many cases. In web2, data breaches and outright hacks have plagued social networks a...
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Privacy-preserving technologies are essential for the modern world. Much of human information is now stored and exchanged online, and vast swathes of that information are meant to be private.
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A persistent problem in web3 today is the issue of scalability: as blockchains like Ethereum add users and experience unpredictable surges in network demand, they increasingly run into the same hitches of slow transactio...
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Because of the success of Bitcoin, most people still believe that blockchains will only ever be useful to build new kinds of currency. The truth, however, is that their usefulness is actually much broader. They're part o...
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Crypto assets like ETH and BTC have been challenging to use for payments, lending, and a variety of other financial applications in large part because of their price instability. Take lending as an example. Making a loan...
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Conceptually, DAOs are simple, but their implications are profound. The team at Syndicate is building the protocols and tools that will enable DAOs to reach their full potential. That’s why today we're announcing that we...
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From the start, our core thesis has been that blockchains are a new class of computers. The three fundamental components of any computer are computation (your CPU), storage (your hard drive), and networking (your network...
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We believe that the next wave of computing innovation will be driven by crypto. We are radically optimistic about crypto’s potential to restore trust and enable new kinds of governance where communities collectively make...
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From the beginning, our core thesis has been that the best way to think of a modern blockchain is as a new class of computer that has the ability to run a special kind of program. These programs are sometimes called smar...
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This is a special episode of the a16z podcast — it's an audio history, told through the voices of the a16z crypto team, about what crypto is, how it really works, and why it matters. This "innovation overview" is meant as a resource, and it features hallway-style conversations with the a16z team as well as outside experts. In brief segments, we’ll take you from the ground up — from the basics, to the most current developments, and beyond that to a look at what we might see in the future.
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We're back to covering multiple items on our show 16 Minutes -- which covers the news, occasional explainers, and teases apart what's hype/ what's real -- as well as where we are on the long arc of innovation.
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An almost invisible hairline crack exists at the foundation of tech giants’ towering strength in AI. There is an opportunity for startups to build technology that better harnesses market forces.
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Today’s episode is one of our intimate hallway-style conversations — or as intimate as remote work allows anyway. It’s all about the history and future of protocol development.
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Editor’s note: It’s Summit Week at a16z, so each day we’re re-sharing some of our favorite talks from the last few years. a16z Summit is an annual, invite-only event bringing together thinkers, builders, and innovators t...
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0/ One view in crypto is that a single blockchain (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) will someday emerge victorious and proceed to dominate all use cases. I disagree. It’s more likely that many networks will emerge as winners in...
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In this episode, which originally aired on YouTube, a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya talks with Frank Chen about five challenging problems the community is trying to solve right now to enable a new computing platform and a...
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Do you sometimes wish you had been born in a different decade so you could have worked on the fundamental building blocks of modern computing? How fun, challenging, and fulfilling would it have been to work on semiconduc...
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In a previous video, a16z crypto Deal Partner Ali Yahya laid out five open problems for building the blockchain computer. One of those problems is building a decentralized storage network. In this video, we double-click...
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Recorded as part of our NYC roadtrip, this episode features Cornell Tech PhD student and software engineer Phil Daian, who researches applied cryptography and smart contracts -- and who also wrote about "On-chain Vote Buying and the Rise of Dark DAOs" in 2018 (with Tyler Kell, Ian Miers, and his advisor Ari Juels). Daian is joined by a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya (previously a software engineer and machine learning researcher at GoogleX and Google Brain), who also recently presented on crypto as the evolution -- and future -- of trust.
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What does it mean to say that a cryptonetwork is decentralized? A quick Twitter search suggests that it has to do with how many computers are running in it, the number of miners keeping it secure, their respective hashin...
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watch time: 28 minutes
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The Promise of Cryptonetworks
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Cryptonetworks are often compared to firms, people, or even coral reefs -- but, observes a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya, they might be much more similar to cities. Where does that analogy fit, and where does it break down...
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“Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcomes.”
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watch time: 37 minutes
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watch time: 45 minutes
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Here’s a list of crypto readings and resources (2018-2019). It's organized from building blocks and basics; foundations (& history); and key concepts—followed by specific topics such as governance; privacy and securi...