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Randomness Summit Tokyo 2023

· 2 min read
Yolan Romailler
Yolan Romailler
Co-Founder & Cryptographer

On the 30th of March, the drand team hosted the second edition of the Randomness Summit alongside Real World Crypto in Tokyo, the first having been online only in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.

Overview​

The Randomness Summit was a one day conference consisting of talks from a range of speakers on topics such as verifiable randomness functions, verifiable delay functions, distributed key generation, cryptographic specifications, and more!

Kickoff Presentation​

  • Speaker: Patrick McClurg from Randamu
  • Topic: Brief overview of drand's progress since the 2020 Randomness Summit.

📽️ Presentations​

  1. Generating Distributed Randomness
    • Speaker: Lefteris Kokoris Kogias from IST Austria and Mysten Labs
    • Topic: Architecting for producing distributed randomness under asynchrony safely.
  2. Specification-Writing Tips
    • Speaker: Filippo Valsorda
    • Topic: Recommendations for specification-writers on avoiding common pitfalls when specifying protocols and schemes using randomness.
  3. Types of Randomness Beacons
    • Speaker: Bernardo David from the University of Copenhagen
    • Topic: Comprehensive breakdown of different types of randomness beacons, their guarantees, and how to combine them to fit your security model.
  4. Supra VRF Architecture
    • Speaker: Pratyay Mukherjee
    • Topic: Challenges faced in designing the Supra VRF and the innovative solutions created.
  5. NIST Randomness Efforts
    • Speaker: Luis Brandão from NIST
    • Topic: Ongoing efforts to standardize randomness beacons and threshold cryptography. Details can be found on the NIST website.
  6. Scalable Byzantine Fault Tolerance Algorithms
    • Speaker: Matej Pavlovic from the Consensus Lab team at [Protocol Labs][PROTOCOL]
    • Topic: Latest research into scalable Byzantine fault tolerance algorithms and how randomness can improve their performance characteristics.
  7. Timelock Encryption
    • Speaker: Yolan Romailler from Randamu
    • Topic: Shortened version of his talk on timelock encryption from the main Real World Crypto conference. The full talk is available on the IACR YouTube channel.

🌎 Real-World Applications​

  1. Drand Implementation in Rust and No-Code Tool
    • Speaker: Hong Yu from StorSwift
    • Topic: Upcoming drand implementation in Rust and a no-code tool for creating smart contracts using timelock encryption.
  2. CLI Tool for Drand and Timelock Encryption
    • Speaker: Thibault Meunier from Cloudflare
    • Topic: New CLI tool for drand and timelock encryption.

📚 Resources​

For those who couldn't attend, we have compiled a YouTube playlist of all the talks available here. The slide decks are available for download on IPFS: Qmd8Hbj31yXq6MDptaiez5JiRiG3vyU672oYTFfaV31NZL.

🎪 Future Events​

It's too early to release details of a possible Randomness Summit 2024, but a big thank you to everyone who attended. We look forward to seeing you at future events! Monitor this blog for announcements of future Randomness Summits and other events where the drand team will be present.

📬 Stay Connected​

Join our drand Slack Workspace to discuss drand and randomness-related topics or share your use cases. Follow us on our newly created @drand_loe Twitter account to stay updated with the latest news from the drand team.