The Future of Randomness

CURBy—the Colorado University Randomness Beacon—is a landmark. Launched in 2025, it's the world's first publicly accessible source of traceable, verifiable, truly random numbers. It uses quantum entanglement: pairs of photons are separated, sent 100 metres apart, and measured. The correlation between outcomes exceeds any "classical" limit—proof of genuine quantum randomness. A technique called Trevisan extraction purifies this into 512 truly random bits. The result? Randomness so even it's effectively 1 in 184 quintillion—as random as anyone needs. The main selling point: anyone can trace the numbers back to source and prove they're random. No one party has complete control.

Blockchain-style traceability makes it work. NIST passes quantum data to the University of Colorado Boulder; an independent Distributed Randomness Beacon Daemon adds ingredients to produce the final binary string. "It's almost like a spider's web of connected, time-ordered things. You can go back and see if anybody cheated." Applications: lottery results, jury selection, clinical trial sampling. (Don't use it for passwords—you don't want a public source for that.)

VRFs and smart contracts complement this. Chainlink VRF provides on-chain randomness for gaming. Projects like drand aggregate entropy across nodes. The future is transparent, verifiable, and decentralized. True randomness is going to be built into all our futures—making the world fairer and safer. It sure beats a coin flip.