Episode

Before Blockchains, There Was State Machine Replication (ft. Barbara Liskov and Tim Roughgarden)

Podcast: a16z crypto show
Published: Jun 22, 2026
Duration seconds: 2146
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Summary

Every blockchain today leans on replication ideas worked out in the 1980s, by a Turing Award winner who wasn’t thinking about how it might apply to money at all. In this episode of First Principles, a16z crypto Head of Research and Columbia professor Tim Roughgarden speaks with Barbara Liskov, MIT professor, Turing Award winner, and one of the most influential computer scientists in programming languages, data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing. a16z crypto research partner Ittai Abraham joins the conversation.