Introducing Randcast 0.1.0-alpha: Empowering Developers with Secure and Verifiable Randomness

ARPA Official
5 min readJul 13, 2023

The world of blockchain and the metaverse thrives on transparency, fairness, and creativity. As developers continue to push the boundaries of innovation, the need for secure and verifiable randomness becomes increasingly crucial. At the heart of the ARPA Network lies an unwavering commitment to empowering developers with advanced tools for an open, creative, and fair metaverse. We understand the significance of verifiable randomness in shaping the fairness and unpredictability required in blockchain applications. Today, we mark a major milestone on our journey as we introduce Randcast 0.1.0-alpha, our first product built on the ARPA Network.

What is Randcast?

Randcast is an on-chain verifiable random number generator (RNG) crafted to cater to the needs of the blossoming metaverse. Randcast provides developers with a suite of APIs to introduce a layer of fairness and unpredictability into their applications, fostering innovation and creating diverse user experiences. Whether you’re looking to enhance the gaming experience, create a transparent lottery, or diversify your NFT attributes, Randcast equips you with the tools you need. Randcast is built to empower a fair and creative metaverse.

Use Cases for Randcast 0.1.0-alpha

The alpha version of Randcast is packed with a range of use cases, all powered by secure, verifiable, and cost-effective RNG. Here’s an overview of what you can do with Randcast 0.1.0-alpha:

Gaming Outcomes

Randcast can be employed in gaming scenarios. When a user interacts with a game, Randcast can choose an outcome (e.g., win, lose, draw) and output it to the user. It can also be used for lucky draw scenarios, where users input the total number of participants and the number of winners, and Randcast picks the winners randomly and transparently.

NFT Attributes

In the world of NFTs, attributes matter. With Randcast, users can input the attribute categories and options, and Randcast randomly selects an option from each category. This capability could be used for assigning color, rarity level, or any other characteristic to an NFT. For adding attribute points, users can define a range of points for each attribute, and Randcast randomly assigns points within these ranges.

Batch Generation

Randcast also offers batch generation of random numbers. When a user needs multiple random numbers, Randcast generates a single random number first, which is then used as a seed to create the batch of numbers. This approach is cost-efficient as it charges for a single random number only.

Shuffle

Last but not least, Randcast can shuffle a user-inputted series of numbers. Users can either define a series of numbers to be shuffled or just specify the number of digits, and Randcast will generate and shuffle a series of integers ranging from 0 to one less than the specified count.

In essence, Randcast 0.1.0-alpha is all about empowering developers with a secure, verifiable, and efficient way of injecting randomness into their applications. From gaming and NFTs to gambling and scientific research, the applications are broad, and the possibilities are endless.

Key Features of Randcast 0.1.0-alpha

Versatility: Randcast offers multiple APIs that cater to various development requirements, making it easier to tailor the randomness to specific needs, whether for gaming, generative art, or lucky draw.

Security: Randcast employs a decentralized approach to gather entropy from a group of nodes distributed across multiple regions, providing unparalleled unpredictability and fairness at the physical level. The generated random numbers are tamper-proof and unlikely to be forged or manipulated.

Uniqueness and Verifiability: Randcast’s underlying cryptographic primitive ensures that random numbers are unique and verifiable. Random numbers are specific to a given signing group and user input.

High Availability: Randcast’s design avoids heavy synchronous communication during the random number generation phase, ensuring high availability even as the network grows.

Blockchain Agnosticism: Randcast is engineered to support multiple chains, providing an adaptable solution for generating random numbers, which facilitates developers from multiverse casting “randomness” spells.

Fee Estimation: Randcast provides accurate estimates of the token required to cover request fees. This ensures sufficient funds are available in the account to avoid failed requests due to insufficient tokens.

How Randcast 0.1.0-alpha Works

The process is streamlined: when a user request is initiated through Randcast smart contract, ARPA Network listens and channels the request to its nodes. These nodes execute the BLS threshold signature process, and finally, the Randcast smart contract receives the generated randomness to process and fulfill the user’s request.

Get Started with Randcast 0.1.0-alpha

We’ve made it easy for developers to integrate Randcast into their applications. Developers can follow our clear instructions and access relevant documentation, including API and GitHub resources. If you have questions or need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to the ARPA Network team on our discord — we’re here to help.

Randcast 0.1.0-alpha is more than just a product; it embodies our dedication to fostering a more fair, creative, and decentralized metaverse. By providing developers with a powerful tool for incorporating verifiable randomness into their applications, we’re enabling a new wave of innovative, user-centric experiences in the metaverse. We invite all developers to explore Randcast, incorporate it into your projects and provide feedback for future enhancements. Together, let’s unlock the full potential of the metaverse.

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

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ARPA Official

ARPA is a privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure enabled by MPC. Learn more at arpachain.io