League of Entropy

{{Short description|Consortium on random number generators}}

The League of Entropy (LoE) is a voluntary consortium of organizations working together to implement an unpredictable, bias-resistant, fully decentralized, and publicly-verifiable threshold cryptosystem designed to deliver distributed Randomness as a Service, (RaaS) among other use cases.{{Cite web |last=Arghire |first=Ionut |date=June 19, 2019 |title=Cloudflare Joins the League of Entropy {{!}} SecurityWeek.Com |url=https://www.securityweek.com/cloudflare-joins-league-entropy |archive-url= |archive-date= |access-date=September 13, 2023 |website=Security Week}}{{Cite web |last=Nichols |first=Shaun |date=June 17, 2019 |title=23. 712. 3. 608. 45. 89. 11. 332. 841. 255. You want more? Cloudflare and pals are streaming 'em live from new RNG API |url=https://www.theregister.com/2019/06/17/cloudflare_random_api/ |access-date=September 13, 2023 |website=The Register}}{{Cite web |last=Pearce |first=Rohan |date=June 17, 2019 |title='League of Entropy': Cloudflare gets, like, totally random |url=https://www2.computerworld.com.au/article/662988/league-entropy-cloudflare-like-totally-random/ |access-date=September 13, 2023 |website=Computerworld}}{{Cite web |last=Hughes |first=Matthew |date=June 17, 2019 |title=Cloudflare's new Open-Source Project helps Anyone obtain Truly Random Numbers |url=https://thenextweb.com/news/cloudflares-new-open-source-project-helps-anyone-obtain-truly-random-numbers |access-date=September 13, 2023 |website=The Next Web}}{{Cite web |last=Cimpanu |first=Catalin |date=June 17, 2019 |title=Cloudflare launches decentralized service for generating random numbers |url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-launches-decentralized-service-for-generating-random-numbers/ |access-date=September 13, 2023 |website=ZDNet |language=en}}{{Cite news |last=Fisher |first=Dennis |date=June 17, 2019 |title=The League of Entropy forms to offer Acts of Public Randomness |work=Decipher |url=https://duo.com/decipher/the-league-of-entropy-forms-to-offer-acts-of-public-randomness |access-date=September 13, 2019}}{{Cite news |author=Staff Writer |date=June 17, 2019 |title=Introducing the League of Entropy: Randomness for All |work=Tech Monitor |url=https://techmonitor.ai/technology/data/league-of-entropy-global-decentralised-randomness-for-all }} The open-source software that powers the League of Entropy's network is called [https://github.com/drand drand], (short for decentralized randomness).

Active members of the League currently include Arbitrand, Automata Network, ChainSafe, cLabs, Cloudflare, DIA Association, Emerald Onion, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Ethereum Foundation, Filecoin Foundation; Gelato Network; IPFS Force, KEN Labs, Kudelski Security, Protocol Labs, PTisp, Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) Foundation, Randamu, StorSwift, Tierion, University of Chile, UCL, Tangle Network, and Zama.

The League was inaugurated in 2019 with the original founding members including Cloudflare, Protocol Labs researcher Nicolas Gailly, University of Chile, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Kudelski Security. The League was created to provide a decentralized alternative to centralized randomness beacons where random number generation may be compromised or manipulated, as occurred in the Hot Lotto fraud scandal.{{Cite news |last=Ingham |first=Lucy |date=June 17, 2019 |title=The decentralised randomness beacon helping to "secure democracy" |work=The Verdict |url=https://www.verdict.co.uk/decentralised-randomness-beacon/ |access-date=September 13, 2023}} It is also intended to avoid the implicit trust assumptions that occur when a single organization or entity is responsible for producing randomness, as in the case of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's [https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/interoperable-randomness-beacons/beacon-20 public randomness beacon].

Verifiable randomness has numerous applications in blockchain computing, gaming, gambling, lotteries, elections, and privacy-preserving data management systems.{{Cite web |last1=Choi |first1=Kevin |last2=Manoj |first2=Aathira |last3=Bonneau |first3=Joseph |date=June 29, 2023 |title=SoK: Distributed Randomness Beacons |url=https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/728.pdf |access-date=June 29, 2023 |website=International Association for Cryptologic Research }}{{Cite journal|last1=Hevia|first1=Alejandro|last2=Gómez|first2=Camilo|date=2020-10-22|title=Why me?: shedding light on random processes via randomness beacons|journal=Communications of the ACM|language=en|volume=63|issue=11|pages=49–50|doi=10.1145/3416959|issn=0001-0782|doi-access=}}