a16z Says Throughput Alone Fails To Deliver What Financial Markets Need

a16z Exposes a $686 Million Flaw in Blockchain Design

Andreessen Horowitz's crypto research arm published an analysis in March 2026, promoted again via its X account on 3 September, arguing that blockchain infrastructure has solved throughput but not execution fairness, pointing to $686 million in cumulative maximal extractable value losses suffered by Ethereum users, a figure drawn from a prior academic study cited in the paper, as evidence that speed without order integrity harms the users networ…

a16z says blockchain's next test is fair execution, not raw speed

According to a blog by venture capital company a16z crypto published in September 3, it is becoming less important to regard raw transaction speed as a criteria for determining the viability of a blockchain for heavy trading. The more relevant considerations involve whether transactions arrive on time and in a predictable order. In the case...

a16z Says Throughput Alone Fails To Deliver What Financial Markets Need

TL;DR a16z published an analysis arguing that performance alone is insufficient for financial markets to adopt blockchains at a global scale. The document identifies three critical requirements that networks must meet: predictable and censorship-resistant inclusion, clear ordering rules, and pre-execution privacy. According to a16z, aggregate throughput grew more than 100 times over five years, but ...