cdixon

Feb 11, 2025

I’m excited to announce that we’re leading the $15M seed round in @joinlegend to simplify DeFi & help bring the next 100M users onchain.

While DeFi activity has grown, it has also become more complex, & remains too complicated for many people to use. Legend is pointing the way to a simpler user experience & broader adoption. Their first product is an embedded smart contract wallet that allows users to borrow, lend, or swap across chains without manual wallet connections or the risk of interacting with malicious websites.

Legend’s founders @json, @hayesgm, & @mykel all worked together at DeFi pioneer Compound. Geoffrey was an inventor of the Compound protocol, and a co-founder of Compound Labs. Mykel & Jayson worked together on product and design at Compound Labs before Jayson took the reins as CEO.

With their user-facing product expertise and empathy for DeFi developers, the Legend team is perfect to address the UX challenge that’s still hindering DeFi adoption. We’re delighted to support them.

Jan 30, 2025

A year ago today, Read Write Own was released. So much has happened in crypto since then.

The past year, I spent a lot of time traveling and speaking at events—some crypto-focused, some not. Even as crypto faced regulatory uncertainty in Washington and sustained criticism from mainstream media, I kept hearing something different from the people I met: passion and optimism. There was a clear gap between the narrative out there and what I was seeing on the ground.

So, while I’m excited to see the tides turn with growing bipartisan and institutional support, I’m not entirely surprised. Crypto was never going away. At some point, the value of what blockchains enable—stablecoins, DeFi, AI systems, games, social experiences, and more—had to be recognized. We’re still far from the full vision I described in Read Write Own, but we’re moving forward.

Huge thanks to all the founders, builders, and supporters who tuned out the noise and kept building. Onward.

Jan 29, 2025

Crypto is advancing quickly on multiple fronts, with much more to come in 2025.

I talked with @laurashin on Unchained about the recent momentum and what I'm excited about, including:

🟧 The President’s EO and the opportunity for lasting, bipartisan crypto legislation 🟧 The intersection of crypto & AI 🟧 Blockchain infra is now ready for apps to flourish 🟧 What a multichain future could look like

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6LFiJDstAdNpm5MU62ok9v

Jan 22, 2025

A new (digital) age at the SEC

https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/sec-digital-age/

Jan 20, 2025

I’m excited to announce that we’re co-leading the $10M seed round in Merit Systems, which is building a new economic model for open source.

Open source software is the lifeblood of the internet, but it’s poorly funded and too reliant on volunteer contributions. Merit is building a protocol that attributes and rewards contributors proportionally to the value they create. The goal is to enable code repositories to become the organizing unit for protocol networks, in the same way that companies are the organizing units for corporate networks.

Merit was founded by @samrags and @rfs. As an @a16zcrypto investor and engineer, Sam developed Jolt, one of the fastest and most promising zkVMs. Similarly, Ryan excelled at Blockchain Capital as an investor and engineer.

@mason, a gifted technologist and investor also from a16z, joined the Merit team to help them scale.

We are excited to back the Merit team and support them with their ambitious mission.

Nov 4, 2024

Today we’re contributing over $23m in additional funds to Fairshake and its affiliated PACs for the 2026 midterm election cycle.

No matter what happens on Election Day we are taking a long-term approach to our policy efforts.

Contributing to Fairshake is just one important component to achieving our ultimate goal of achieving clear laws to govern the crypto industry while protecting consumers and allowing entrepreneurs to build with confidence.

You can read my full thoughts here: https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/a-long-term-view-of-crypto-policy/

Oct 16, 2024

Today we released our latest State of Crypto report.

It shares insights on key trends — like stablecoins, L2s, and AI — plus, crypto’s rise as a policy issue, new data on builders and users, and more.

7 takeaways from the report:

1. Crypto activity and usage hit all-time highs
2. Crypto has become a key political issue ahead of the U.S. election
3. Stablecoins have found product-market fit
4. Major scaling upgrades have drastically reduced onchain transaction costs
5. DeFi remains popular — and it’s growing
6. Crypto could solve some of AI’s most pressing challenges
7. More scalable infrastructure has unlocked new onchain applications

Read the full report here: https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/state-of-crypto-report-2024/

Aug 21, 2024

Today we’re announcing that @a16zcrypto is leading an $80M Series B financing of PIP Labs, developer of @storyprotocol.

Story is a blockchain protocol that allows creators to register their IP so they can track and monitor use, protecting their legal and economic rights. The goal is to create foundational infra that can underpin a new economic covenant between creators and platforms.

The team behind Story has deep tech and creative expertise. CEO/cofounder @s-y-lee has impressed us with big-picture vision and world-class tactical execution. Cofounder @jasonzhao studied CS at Stanford, dove deeper into AI at DeepMind, and now leads technical development on Story.

For AI systems and creative people to happily co-exist, creators need a modern way to ensure they get compensated for their work. Story takes a proven approach — IP law — and updates it for the age of AI.

We are excited to support the Story team on this important mission.

Conclusion

Excited for Apple VR.