A Yarn of Randomness: The CU Randomness Beacon and the Twine Protocol

Abstract. Randomness beacons are useful tools for enabling unbiased choice in high stakes decisions. These could include random selections for jury duty, ballot audits, or even potentially voting district border decisions. Following in the footsteps of NIST’s Interoperable Randomness Beacons project, our team of both CU Boulder and NIST researchers have created a novel Quantum-Classical hybrid randomness beacon called CURBy. The beacon is based on a newly devised protocol called Twine which enables efficient decentralized time-stamping and immutable record keeping. This talk will give an overview of the CU Randomness Beacon, as well as the Twine protocol and its potential applicability far beyond randomness generation.

Based on joint work with Gautam A. Kavuri and Lynden K. Shalm.

[Slides]