Breeding unicorns: Developing trustworthy and scalable randomness beacons
Samvid Dharanikota1, Michael Toft Jensen2, Sebastian Rom Kristensen2
1Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Plos One
|April 29, 2020
Summary
This study introduces a trustworthy and efficient randomness beacon for smart contracts. It offers unpredictable, verifiable random numbers with low computational complexity, enhancing decentralized applications.
Area of Science:
- Computer Science
- Cryptography
- Distributed Systems
Background:
- Randomness beacons provide verifiable random numbers crucial for decentralized applications.
- Existing beacons may have high computational costs or trust requirements for users.
- Smart contracts require secure and efficient sources of randomness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To design, implement, and evaluate a trustworthy and efficient randomness beacon.
- To ensure low computational complexity and bias resistance for users.
- To explore its application in smart contracts and distributed ledgers.
Main Methods:
- Structured security analysis to guide the design.
- Implementation of a novel randomness beacon.
- Evaluation of performance and security on distributed ledgers, including Ethereum.
Main Results:
- The developed beacon is trustworthy, efficient, and publicly verifiable.
- It requires no user registration or intensive computation.
- Successful demonstration in an Ethereum smart contract lottery.
Conclusions:
- The proposed randomness beacon is a viable and practical primitive for smart contracts.
- It addresses key challenges of efficiency and verifiability in decentralized randomness generation.
- The beacon enhances the security and fairness of blockchain-based applications.
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