Randomness

Beyond accurate price feeds, many decentralised applications (dApps) require another critical ingredient to function fairly and unpredictably: verifiable randomness.

The Need for Verifiable Randomness on-Chain.

In a deterministic world of blockchains and smart contracts, generating truly random numbers is surprisingly challenging. Smart contracts operate based on pre-defined code, and achieving genuine randomness requires bringing in external entropy (unpredictability) from the off-chain world in a secure and verifiable manner.

But why is randomness important? Many decentralised applications depend on it for fair and unbiased operation. Consider these examples:

• Gaming & Lotteries: Ensuring fair outcomes in games, lotteries, and raffles. Randomness determines winners and distributes prizes fairly, preventing manipulation and ensuring trust in the game's integrity.

• NFT Minting & Distribution: Randomly assigning traits or rarity levels to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) during minting or distributing NFTs fairly among participants.

• Algorithmic Trading Strategies: Introducing an element of unpredictability into decentralised trading algorithms to prevent front-running and improve market fairness.

• Sampling & Selection Processes: Selecting participants randomly for governance processes, audits, or other decentralised decision-making mechanisms.

Without a reliable source of verifiable randomness, these applications risk being predictable, unfair, or susceptible to manipulation.

Switchboard Randomness

Switchboard’s Randomness service is designed to provide secure, verifiable, and readily accessible randomness directly to your decentralised applications. We understand that for randomness to be trusted in decentralised environments, it must be both unpredictable and cryptographically provable, so we have built Switchboard Randomness to be:

• Verifiable & Transparent: Randomness is generated and delivered in a way that allows anyone to cryptographically verify its authenticity and that it was not manipulated. This transparency is crucial for trust and fairness.

• Secure & Unpredictable: We leverage robust off-chain randomness sources and secure on-chain delivery mechanisms to ensure the unpredictability of the generated random values, mitigating risks of exploitation.

• On-Chain Availability: Random numbers generated by Switchboard are readily available on-chain for your smart contracts to consume directly, simplifying integration and reducing complexity.

• Low Latency & Efficiency: Designed to provide randomness efficiently and with minimal latency, suitable for applications requiring quick access to random values.

In this documentation section, you will find detailed information on:

• Integration Guides & Code Examples: Step-by-step instructions and practical code snippets demonstrating how to integrate Switchboard Randomness into your smart contracts.