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

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/a16z-crypto-show-5434524/before-blockchains-there-was-state-machine-replication-ft-barbara-liskov-and-tim-roughgarden
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/a16z-crypto-show-5434524/before-blockchains-there-was-state-machine-replication-ft-barbara-liskov-and-tim-roughgarden.md
Podcast: [a16z crypto show](https://stenobird.com/podcast/a16z-crypto-show-5434524)
Published: 2026-06-22T17:28:10+00:00
Episode link: https://web3-with-a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/barbara-liskov-Py20NhRh
Audio file: https://mgln.ai/e/1344/afp-848985-injected.calisto.simplecastaudio.com/bf52be5a-9faf-45fb-9bc3-bb4270ec53d9/episodes/85c0b65a-367f-4559-ba98-e5af50bdacc3/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=bf52be5a-9faf-45fb-9bc3-bb4270ec53d9&awEpisodeId=85c0b65a-367f-4559-ba98-e5af50bdacc3&feed=XPOpH7r4
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/a16z-crypto-show-5434524/episodes/before-blockchains-there-was-state-machine-replication-ft-barbara-liskov-and-tim-roughgarden
Duration seconds: 2146

## Resource

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.

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