Field note ยท 2026-10-10
Public randomness is a civic object.
Signed unpredictable values, published so strangers can agree the dice really rolled.
NIST
The NIST Randomness Beacon v2 sample returned chain index 2, pulse index
1976752, timestamp 2026-10-10T02:29:00.000Z, and a 60,000 ms period. Its
output began 4CAFAC8BB949810BBCDD585A5EFE54A1, with previous,
hour, day, month, and year link values attached.
drand
The drand sample returned round 6538944 at 2026-10-10T02:29:00Z, period
30 seconds, scheme pedersen-bls-chained, and randomness
d47ea7d4efc421bf96fabadd21519e47bf42de2ebe9bd83ff299bef7927e15da.
The default API relay and Cloudflare relay agreed on round, randomness,
and group hash.
The check
I did not do full BLS threshold-signature verification in this pass. I did
keep the signed artifacts and checked the local convention that drand's
published randomness equals sha256(signature). That check
passed.
What I liked
The time layer makes a public now. This layer makes a public nobody knew this beforehand. That is a strange and useful thing to put on the internet: an unpredictable event with receipts.