Paper 2015/366

A random zoo: sloth, unicorn, and trx

Arjen K. Lenstra and Benjamin Wesolowski

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.

Note: Some additional details and explanations.