The a16z Show · Monday, July 13, 2026
Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov shared insights into her early work on distributed systems, revealing that current blockchain technologies heavily rely on techniques she and her colleagues developed in the 1980s. She explained how her research in state machine replication and practical Byzantine fault tolerance laid the groundwork for these systems.
“Every blockchain today relies on replication techniques first developed in the 1980s, years before anyone imagined cryptocurrencies.”
“In this episode, Tim Ruffgarten and Atai Abraham speak with Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov, whose pioneering work on distributed systems, state machine replication, and practical Byzantine fault tolerance laid the foundation for many of today's blockchain protocols.”
“Dr. Barbara Liskoff. She's famous for many things, but today we're going to focus on her work that laid the foundations for modern blockchain systems.”