SoK: Decentralized Randomness Beacon Protocols

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews and classifies decentralized randomness beacon protocols, analyzing their primitives, properties, security, and performance, to provide a comprehensive understanding and guide future research in this critical cryptographic area.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive systematization of DRB protocols, defining standard properties, classifying protocols, and identifying key features and future research directions.

Findings

Classified DRB protocols based on interactivity and primitives

Outlined key properties like unpredictability and bias-resistance

Highlighted challenges and future research directions

Abstract

The scientific interest in the area of Decentralized Randomness Beacon (DRB) protocols has been thriving recently. Partially that interest is due to the success of the disruptive technologies introduced by modern cryptography, such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies, and decentralized finances, where there is an enormous need for a public, reliable, trusted, verifiable, and distributed source of randomness. On the other hand, recent advancements in the development of new cryptographic primitives brought a huge interest in constructing a plethora of DRB protocols differing in design and underlying primitives. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic and comprehensive work systematizes and analyzes the existing DRB protocols. Therefore, we present a Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) intending to structure the multi-faced body of research on DRB protocols. In this SoK, we delineate the DRB protocols along the following axes: their underlying primitive, properties, and security. This SoK tries to fill that gap by providing basic standard definitions and requirements for DRB protocols, such as Unpredictability, Bias-resistance, Availability (or Liveness), and Public Verifiability. We classify DRB protocols according to the nature of interactivity among protocol participants. We also highlight the most significant features of DRB protocols such as scalability, complexity, and performance along with a brief discussion on its improvement. We present future research directions along with a few interesting research problems.