
Secure Randomness: From Zero to Verifiable Delay Functions, Part 1
A secure source of randomness is one of the most critical components of many decentralized applications. However, perhaps surprisingly, there is currently no on-chain source of randomness that is truly trustless. Almost all solutions that have been used in practice are either fundamentally broken or require the participants involved to trust each other or a third party. Why is that?
In this two-part series, we’ll discuss the different attempts to construct a secure source of randomness, and why all currently known solutions have fundamental shortcomings in some aspect.