Before Blockchains, There Was State Machine Replication
About this episode
The episode discusses the historical techniques of state machine replication that laid the groundwork for modern blockchain technology.
Every blockchain today relies on replication techniques first developed in the 1980s by researchers who weren't thinking about cryptocurrencies at all. In this episode, Tim Roughgarden speaks with MIT professor and Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov, one of the pioneers of programming languages, fault tolerance, and distributed systems. Joined by a16z crypto research partner Ittai Abraham, they trace the evolution of ideas that now underpin modern blockchain networks. The conversation explores viewstamped replication, Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), state machine replication, and why concepts developed decades before Bitcoin became the foundation for today's blockchain protocols. Along the way, Liskov reflects on the relationship between theory and practice, the importance of modularity and formal reasoning, and why AI is creating a new generation of systems research.
People in this episode
Host: Tim Roughgarden
Guest: Barbara Liskov
Topics covered
- blockchain
- state machine replication
- distributed systems
- fault tolerance
- cryptocurrency
- programming languages
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: MIT, a16z, Turing Award
More episodes of The a16z Show
- Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | Applied Intuition
- Hugging Face's CEO on Open Source AI, Model Routing, and the Future of Competition
- Amjad Masad on Going Direct, Building Replit, and the Future of Software
- Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future
- From the Archive: Can Anyone Catch NVIDIA? | The Future of Chips and Infrastructure
- Is AI a Bubble? | Gavin Baker on Data Centers, GPUs, and the AI Economy
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The a16z Show podcast page.