Pranav Garimidi
@PGarimidi
mechanism design @a16zCrypto Research
I think there are two separate issues in the discussion. (1) Will block building or validation or proving be the ultimate bottleneck? (2) Is a nuanced fee market necessary for effective admission control, and, if so, how to facilitate one? Below are some of my opinions.…
@MaxResnick1 @zmanian @yangl1996 curious for your take here
Excited to share our new paper, "Accountable Liveness", w/ @AndrewLewisPye @Tim_Roughgarden @luca_zanolini. We explore when and how adversarial nodes can be punished if they stall transaction confirmation in blockchains. eprint.iacr.org/2025/693
Can a blockchain stay secure even if almost all validators are compromised—way beyond the usual “51% attack” limit? Excited to share our new work on blockchain consensus under adversary majority, where we tackle this big question! a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/…
Part of the problem is we didn't agree on a name for the class of burning posted price mechanisms that you can plug any controller into. Imo burning posted price is still the correct choice but the specific controller in 1559 is clearly busted
It is insane the level of gaslighting and glazing that has gone on on this platform about 1559. Those of us who actually work on the math know that it is deeply flawed and want to improve on it as much as possible. Those who don't simply parrot the same false narratives from…
Turns out a lot of the mechanisms we see in crypto can trace their roots back to foundational econ work from the 80s studying how political parties decide to make investments. Check out the talk to learn more!
My EC talk on Tullock contests in crypto/web3 is now on YT. (Link in replies.) Covers mining, staking, execution tickets, shared sequencing. Includes ongoing work with @PGarimidi @mikeneuder. Thx to @tarunchitra @theo_diamandis @ks_kulk @malleshpai @MaxResnick1 for the invite!
my thesis is that bidding is broken on solana because knowing how to optimally bid in high dimensional fee markets is inherently extremely hard. You can show that equilibria bidding under pay as bid mechanisms has provably bad welfare in these regimes. Of course real contention…
Reminder to apply by tomorrow to spend next summer working with with us on some of the most interesting problems in the space in cryptography, consensus, mechanism design, and much more
Over the past three summers @a16zcrypto we've had 19 tremendous research interns. Want to be part of the summer '25 cohort? The application is open now, for full consideration apply by Nov 8. (Link in replies.)
Helios is becoming a multichain light client for Ethereum. It has become clear that light clients are fundamental to Ethereum scaling. A future with thousands of rollups doesn’t feel far away, and the closer we get, the more critical rollup interoperability will become. 🧵👇
Stoked to work with @0xBrMazoRoig and @Miaogik on understanding the design space of sybil-proof mechanisms!
TL;DR's Research Fellows tackle the most pressing problems in DeFi research. Congratulations to the 18 TLDR Fellows selected for the 2024-25 cohort! We all gathered to kick off the fellowship this weekend in NYC. Meet them in the thread below: