Why Randomness Must Be Verified

Brick-and-mortar casinos have a long, checkered history. In the 1970s and 80s, slot machines were regularly rigged—weighted reels, magnetic devices, and software that could be manipulated to reduce payouts. The industry responded with regulation, third-party testing labs (e.g., GLI, eCOGRA), and certifications. Physical dice and roulette wheels were inspected for bias. But trust still depended on someone checking—and players had to take that on faith.

Beyond gaming: Randomness matters for democracy too. In Chile, politicians and public servants face random tax audits—and those chosen often claim they're being targeted. "Everybody complains that it's a witch hunt." Those claims are much harder to make when the system uses traceable randomness whose numbers can be verified back to the source. Chile currently uses seismic activity and radio output—but seismic events have causes, and someone picks the playlist. Neither is fully random nor fully traceable.

Online casinos made the problem worse. Players had no way to verify that a "random" outcome was truly random. The server ran code they couldn't see. RNGs could be weak, seeded poorly, or deliberately skewed. Provably fair systems emerged as a response: commit to the outcome before it's revealed. Blockchain adds a further layer—outcomes recorded on-chain, timestamped, auditable by anyone.

The lesson: wherever money, fairness, or trust is at stake, verification is non-negotiable. Trust, but verify—or better yet, don't trust; verify.