Best of 2024: Popular pieces and themes

Here’s a roundup of our most popular and best-performing pieces and themes from this year — including podcasts, videos, and articles that cover everything from pressing policy debates to emerging trends in culture, governance, and infrastructure. 

We’ve also included a few bonus picks from the a16z crypto editorial team. Whether you’re looking to reflect on the year’s milestones, or look ahead at trends shaping the future of crypto, there’s something here for everyone. 

It was a momentous year for crypto policy and regulation. The team wrote a lot about how to make headway against the headwinds, and ended up with a promising path forward. Below are some of their frameworks and views on shaping good regulation for the industry for the years ahead.

• The DUNA: An oasis for DAOs — We dig into DUNA, a new entity structure for DAOs created earlier this year that’s likely to become the industry standard for blockchain networks created in the United States. [See also: the Big Ideas for 2024 on DUNA.]
• An important bill that helps our industry — Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed FIT21 signaling bipartisan support (including 71 democrats). This overview explains how the bill could make regulating crypto in the U.S. clearer for the industry.
• How bad policy favors memes over matter — Why does the market keep repeating cycles — instead of supporting the more productive blockchain-based innovations that will truly make a difference for people?
• Prediction markets and beyond — Prediction markets finally hit the main stage with the 2024 election: Why now, what’s hype vs reality, and where do they go next?
• Debanking: what you need to know — “Debanking” (and “de-risking”) has been happening behind the scenes for years but is back in the public conversation; here’s a quick explainer on the phenomenon to help separate the signal from the noise

Editors’ pick: 

• “Former prosecutors who spent a substantial part of their careers putting away bad guys help Congress figure out which measures will be most effective at reigning in illicit financial activity in crypto.” — Tim Sullivan

This year, we’ve seen several key technologies in crypto get faster, cheaper, and more practical to build with — as SNARKs, light clients, and developer experience progressed beyond existing as theory or just being “production-ready” into becoming core infrastructure for the industry. 

• The web3 governance lab: Using DAOs to study political institutions and behavior at scale — A guide to using web3 governance as a laboratory for governance experiments in democracy, and a readout on recent experiments. [More on this, including a roadmap for experimentation here]
• Understanding Jolt: Clarifications and reflections — An update on steady progress so more builders can use Lasso and Jolt, a simple, performant lookup argument and zkVM, which we launched as open source earlier this year. [For a higher-level overview of this body of work, see this post.]
• Open Sourcing the Superchain (with Optimism) — A conversation on the peculiarities of open source stewardship, from contributor incentives to roadmaps.

Editor’s pick: 

• “For the 50th episode of our ‘web3 with a16z’ show, Tim Roughgarden, Head of Research (and Columbia professor) and Dan Boneh Senior Research Advisor (and professor at Stanford University) discuss how work in the blockchains/ crypto space has led to advances in several important technologies — which can be (and are being) used by many other industries beyond crypto. It’s an exploration of technologies anyone can use, and how innovation happens!” — Sonal Chokshi

Tools and best practices are always evolving in crypto. We continue to share frameworks for the nuts and bolts of building a company in crypto, but this year, our team also added playbooks for tokens and new models for application tokens. 

• State of Crypto Report 2024 — This year’s annual state of crypto report covers new data on stablecoins, AI, and all-time highs in user activity. The post, and this conversation between the report producers, also shares a few different ways to explore the data.
• Social media for startup founders: A practical guide to building an online presence — Time-tested tools, guidelines, and frameworks for starting a social presence from scratch.
• A new financial model for app tokens: How to generate cash flows — A new, compliant approach for generating cash flows for application tokens; since there are already existing business models for infrastructure tokens . [This post was part of a larger series on designing and launching tokens. See them all here.]
• Token do’s and don’ts – A conversation about all things tokens, from design to launch. a16z crypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin joins general counsel and head of decentralization Miles Jennings to discuss the tradeoffs of token launch strategies, and the art of tokencraft.
• Leading through uncertainty (with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) — Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong discusses the early days of Coinbase, the fallout from FTX, crypto in politics, how to continue innovating when you have an existing core business, and more.

Producer’s pick:

• “Ben Rubin’s presentation at CSX London delivers a powerful message about the resilience needed to navigate the unpredictable world of startups. His insights on creating intuitive, human-centered products really stand out, especially his philosophy around simplifying user experiences” — Angel Gehr

Artists and creators have always led the charge when it comes to experimenting with and adopting emerging technologies. This year, we explored the technology inspiring pioneering creators — and the forces holding them back. 

• The art of technology, the technology of art — Technology has changed art, and artists have evolved with every new technology. In this podcast, we cover the endless debates underlying these movements, including invention vs. remix, commercialism vs. art, and more.
• On fixing the economics of being a creator — We should be living in a golden age for creators. Yet it’s still not possible for most creators to make a healthy living off their work today. Chris Dixon argues for how to return control to creators and fans through blockchains.
• Let’s get digi-physical: From tap chips to Taylor Swift — A discussion on the merging of the digital and physical; new consumer experiences enabled by chipped goods; the challenge of counterfeits and bots; and more.

Editors’ pick:

• “For a look at the art and media we’re personally consuming, check out a conversation on what, how, and why we’re reading.” — Stephanie Zinn

a16z crypto founder and Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon wrote a book on the technological and cultural impact of blockchain technologies. Released earlier this year, Read Write Own hit bestseller lists, went on tour, and continues to come out in several languages. Here are some of the top pieces related to the book and its themes:

• The Read Write Own Manifesto — Freedom and a sense of ownership led to a golden period of creativity and innovation that drove the growth of the internet, leading to countless applications that have transformed our world. Then, everything changed. 
• Read Write Own: A new era of the internet — A conversation between author Chris Dixon and book editor and podcast co-host Robert Hackett on the writing process, the book’s themes, and what could follow the internet’s read-write-own era.
• The story of the internet, emergent networks, and their effects — A discussion on writing and the emergent properties of decentralized networks, the origins of the internet, and more with Chris Dixon Stephen Johnson, Editorial Director at Google Labs.

Editors’ pick:

• “Crypto is full of jargon, so we compiled a glossary of key terms, as defined in Read Write Own — everything from airdrops to zero knowledge proofs.” — Robert Hackett

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