American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is starting a new research hub to study Web3 and crypto. The company released a blog post that says in the last decade crypto and web3 has become as a frontier technology and an independent sector. It unites elements of computer science, economics, finance, and humanities.
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a16z mentioned that modern blockchains are like just computers as they are entirely programmable. The company mentioned that the industry allows developers to write code and decide how it will behave in the future.
The VC says that Ethereum and other blockchains has unlocked a rich design space for innovation, and that the team has only begun to explore the industry. In the past few years, various entrepreneurs have build blockchain-based applications including DeFi, social, games, DAOs, and others.
a16z mentioned that while innovation in the space is growing, each idea needs a ground based on research to how the technological movement will turn out.Among hard questions of the industry are; how the comutational infrastructure will scale and evolve, how to set the tokenomics to align all participants, and how to buoild the best tokenomics into web3 apps like games and social networks.
Andreessen Horowitz says the industrial research hub will will bridge the worlds of academic theory with industry practice, and help shape web3 as a formal area of study.