Title: Trustworthy public randomness with sloth, unicorn, and trx

Authors: Arjen K. Lenstra; Benjamin Wesolowski

Addresses: Laboratory for Cryptologic Algorithms, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 14, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland ' Laboratory for Cryptologic Algorithms, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 14, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract: Many applications require trustworthy generation of public random numbers. It is shown how this can be achieved using a hash function that is timed to be as slow as desired (sloth), while the correctness of the resulting hash can be verified quickly. It is shown how sloth can be used for uncontestable random number generation (unicorn), and how unicorn can be used for a new trustworthy random elliptic curves service (trx) and random-sample voting.

Keywords: public random number generation; random beacon; slow-timed hash.

DOI: 10.1504/IJACT.2017.089354

International Journal of Applied Cryptography, 2017 Vol.3 No.4, pp.330 - 343

Received: 22 Apr 2016
Accepted: 08 Aug 2016
Published online: 21 Jan 2018 *

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