The best industrial research laboratories in history have played a vital role in the development of many modern technologies. There are many great challenges in web3.
Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has announced the launch of a new academic lab dedicated to solving research problems facing the growing digital asset industry. The best industrial research laboratories in history have played a vital role in the development of many modern technologies. Dubbed a16z Crypto Research, the goal is to create a university-like effort within the company, similar to Bell Labs or DeepMind, the artificial intelligence research arm of Google subsidiary Alphabet. Web 3 is a new scientific breakthrough that brings together ideas from computer science, finance, economics, and the humanities. After all, like personal computers and smartphones, modern block chains behave like computers: they are fully programmable.
The new lab will aim to identify and solve fundamental research problems facing the ongoing mainstream adoption of cryptography. In some cases, the group may develop new tools that can help a16z portfolio companies grow their business. Another investment firm, Paradigm, has followed a similar strategy by working on a new mechanism for selling NFTs.
Teams will work with a16z crypto wallet companies to:
- Generate ideas to solve difficult problems
- Write a cool code that brings these ideas to life
- Ensure that ideas and their implementation comply with any applicable regulations
- Share results with the entire web3 community
A16z makes no secret of this, it aspires to contribute to research breakthroughs that can contribute to code development and thus the development of Web3 actively, as well as impact the broader field of academic research. The group cannot simply focus on topics in the fields of computer science or engineering and can also explore topics such as how to think about NFTs in the context of art history or the impact of decentralized autonomous organizations on political science. One of the fund’s arguments is that there is an opportunity to do foundation work right now which will be taught to undergraduate students in 2030…
web 3
With the advent of Ethereum and other fully programmable blockchains, web3 has opened up an extremely rich design space for innovation. It’s a space I’m just beginning to explore. Over the past few years, we’ve seen entrepreneurs build applications that include new blockchain-based financial assets (DeFi), social networks that empower artists and creators (via NFTs), games with embedded economies that transcend and interact with real-world markets and large-scale new human coordination mechanisms Which relies on open source code that runs on blockchains (DAOs), rather than central brokers.
Over the past decade, the world of cryptography and Web3 has also become a new technological frontier, becoming an independent field of knowledge that brings together elements of computer science, economics, finance and the humanities. After all, like personal computers and smartphones, modern block chains behave like computers: they are fully programmable. However, what makes it unique is that it allows developers to write code that makes strong commitments about how that code will behave in the future. It is this property that allows Bitcoin to guarantee that there will only be 21 million Bitcoins. This is the same property that gave rise to a fundamentally new computational model.
Innovation in space is only accelerating. Each new pioneering idea for a Web3 implementation or protocol tends to reveal new research challenges that are fundamental to how this technology movement is evolving. Already, these challenges included difficult questions about how the IT infrastructure will evolve and evolve; How the incentives for the token should be structured in the protocols to align all participants; And how to better integrate distinct economies into consumer-facing Web3 applications, such as games and social networking.
The founding members of the team.