Chainlink’s new feature to increase randomness in gaming and security dApps

Chainlink, an Ethereum-based decentralized oracle network, has launched a new feature called the Verifiable Random Function Oracle (VRF). According to a blog post, VRF aims to accelerate the development of smart contracts in gaming, security and other platforms by boosting randomness and make them more tamper-proof. 

Chainlink stated: 

The VRF secret key is a number the oracle chooses from the uniform distribution on {0,…,#secp256k1-1} in a cryptographically secure way. (secp256k1) is the elliptic curve used by Ethereum’s cryptography. Associated with this secret key is a public key, which is used to identify the oracle. The oracle registers the public key with the on-chain machinery, along with the chainlink job-ID it will respond to.

Owing to the provable randomness of the oracle, VRF can be used to make games more trustworthy and carry out tasks such as randomly assigning judges to cases at a law court, according to Chainlink. 

VRF has already attracted its first adopter in PoolTogether, a no-loss savings game that is powered by audited, secure smart contracts. The firm noted that it would soon replace its current manual and centralized process of winner selection with VRF, thereby boosting the transparency of its system. 

The PoolTogether Protocol uses random numbers to select the winner of each prize. Initially, this randomness generation process was a manual and centralized process, making it difficult for some users to fully trust PoolTogether Protocol’s ability to generate a provably fair winner.