VRF

Introduction

Randomness is a crucial element in many online multiplayer games, especially when it comes to things like loot drops, matchmaking, and other important gameplay mechanics in blockchain games.

To achieve this randomness, many games rely on a cryptographic function called a Verifiable Random Function (VRF).

What is Verifiable Random Function (VRF)

A Verifiable Random Function (VRF) is a cryptographic function that takes a secret key and an input string as input and returns a random output string. The key property of a VRF is that the output is verifiable, meaning that anyone can verify that the output was indeed generated from the input and the secret key, without needing to know the secret key themselves.

This is useful in applications that require random inputs, such as games and other cryptographic protocols, where it is important that the randomness is fair and cannot be manipulated by any party.

Many top NFT teams have for example, used a VRF to ensure minted tokens are randomly assigned jpegs and that rares are verifiably assigned to random token #’s.