🎧 **a16z's 'First Principles': How Bitcoin Rewired a Classic Computer Science Problem**

A new a16z crypto podcast traces how Bitcoin solved a decades-old distributed computing puzzle: getting independent machines to agree on shared state even when some participants are faulty or malicious.
• Researchers Tim Roughgarden and Ittai Abraham unpack **Byzantine agreement** and state machine replication — the theory underlying every blockchain consensus mechanism.
• The conversation traces the line from early proof-of-work to **proof-of-stake**, Tendermint, Casper, and modern DAG-based protocols.
_Old CS theory, it turns out, still shapes today's fastest and most secure chains._

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[#a16z](/search?q=%23a16z)