This is the year the world came onchain.
When we launched our first State of Crypto report, the industry was still in its adolescence. The total crypto market was worth about half what it is today. Blockchains were much slower, more expensive, and le
Each year, the State of Crypto report from a16z crypto cuts through the noise and tracks crypto’s evolution across markets, technology, policy, and culture.
Now in its fourth edition, the 2025 State of Crypto report reveals how crypto has gone ma
An overview of the optimal security a Proof-of-Stake chain can obtain from an existing blockchain using only succinct commitments. David Tse (Stanford) provides a complete solution based on the concept of interchain timestamping, and applies it on two settings: First, when the security producer is Bitcoin, in which case its security is used to protect the Proof-of-Stake consumer chain from long-range attacks and transaction censorship; and second, when the security producer is another Proof-of-Stake chain, in which case its security is used to enhance the slashable economic security of the consumer chain. He also discusses Babylon, a project that builds technologies based on these ideas to secure the Cosmos interchain ecosystem and beyond.
About the speaker
David Tse is the Thomas Kailath and Guanghan Xu Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He received the 2017 Claude E. Shannon Award, given annually to the top information theorist in the field, and the 2019 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, given annually for outstanding achievements in the information sciences. At Stanford, he leads a research lab focusing on blockchain consensus protocols. Recent projects include a collaboration with Ethereum Foundation to improve the security of the PoS Ethereum beacon chain consensus protocol. Currently he is on leave working on Babylon.
About a16z crypto research
a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet. Our researchers are technologists, scientists, cryptographers, and cryptocurrency experts, working to bridge the worlds of academic theory with industry practice, and to help shape crypto and web3 as a formal area of study. More about us: a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research
