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What beacon verification does—and does not—prove
A drand beacon contains a round number and a BLS signature. The signature is the cryptographic material to verify; a response’s randomness field is not proof by itself. drand’s protocol and operator guidance identify chain information as the client’s root of trust. That means the public key and relevant chain parameters must come from a trusted source, not merely from the same relay delivering the beacon. See the drand protocol specification and operator documentation.
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Verification establishes that the returned beacon is valid for the configured chain and protocol rules. It does not establish that your application selected a fair round, mapped the verified output to a bounded value without bias, or used that value in a manipulation-resistant way. Those are separate design obligations.
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Choose the chain and pin its identity
First decide which drand network and scheme your application intends to consume. The official HTTP/API documentation describes the documented networks and endpoint patterns; check it for current network names and endpoints, since these can change.
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Obtain the intended chain information through a trusted out-of-band channel. Pin the expected public key and chain parameters in application or deployment configuration. A relay’s /info response is useful for comparison, but should not establish trust on its own: an untrusted node could provide a different key. The official JavaScript examples advise comparing expected chainHash and publicKey values with the endpoint’s chain information. See drand developer documentation.
Verify the beacon and its round
Prefer a maintained client
When practical, use a maintained drand client and leave beacon verification enabled. The official libraries are designed to verify randomness rounds and offer features such as failover, racing, aggregation, and caching. These features can simplify delivery, but they do not remove the need to select and inspect the intended chain identity. The API documentation describes client libraries and transports; it does not provide an independent benchmark of their latency, availability, or security trade-offs.
Keep signature checks enabled
In the official JavaScript examples, disableBeaconVerification is false, and the examples allow expected chain identity to be supplied through chainVerificationParams. Setting verification to true disables signature checking; the drand examples label this insecure. Configure the expected chain hash and public key where supported, and confirm that the client actually verifies the beacon rather than merely parsing the response. Refer to the drand Code Examples for current option names and usage.
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If you call the HTTP API directly
The API supports fetching the latest beacon or a specific round. Its responses include the round and BLS signature; chained responses may also include previous_signature. A direct integration must implement the protocol’s signature verification and expected-message rules against the pinned chain information. Checking only TLS, the JSON shape, or the randomness field is not equivalent to cryptographic verification. The endpoint and response details are documented in the HTTP/API reference.
Apply the right rule for the scheme
For a chained scheme, each beacon incorporates the previous signature, linking rounds; verify the relevant link as required by the protocol. For an unchained scheme, that link is absent, and chain integrity is not required to verify an individual random value. Do not apply chained assumptions to an unchained chain—or treat a missing previous-signature field as proof of a fault without first identifying the scheme. The distinction is specified in the protocol specification.
Validate the requested round
A round maps to time using the chain’s genesis time and period. Check that the returned round is the one your application requested or intended, using that chain’s rules. Missed rounds can occur; after recovery, the next beacon may build on the last successfully generated beacon. A missing round alone therefore does not prove a forged response, and applications should handle unavailable rounds explicitly rather than assuming every scheduled period produced a beacon. See the operator documentation and protocol specification.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Derive a bounded sample without modulo bias
The verified signature and the bounded sample are different outputs of your pipeline. The drand tutorial describes hashing the signature to obtain a random value and suggests rejection sampling by re-hashing signatures as an exercise. See the drand tutorial.
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Define the output range and an unambiguous byte encoding for the verified signature and any retry counter.
-
Hash that encoding to obtain a candidate integer drawn from a fixed-width space of size
M(for ab-bit candidate,M = 2b). -
Let
limit = M - (M mod n). If the candidate is at leastlimit, derive a new candidate using the next retry counter and hash again.Free tools Windows power users keep installed
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Otherwise, return
candidate mod n. The accepted range has a size divisible byn, so every result has the same number of candidate preimages, assuming the hash output behaves uniformly for this use.
Specify the hash, encoding, candidate width, counter rule, and range in your implementation so independent consumers can reproduce the sample. The tutorial’s exercise is not a complete standardized sampling API; do not imply that a particular mapping is mandated by drand.
Quick Recap
Operational checklist
- Choose the intended network and scheme from current drand documentation.
- Get the chain public key and parameters from a trusted out-of-band source; pin them in configuration.
- Compare endpoint chain information, including chain hash and public key, with the pinned values.
- Fetch the intended round and verify its signature using the correct scheme rules.
- Handle missed or unavailable rounds explicitly.
- If producing a bounded value, document and implement an unbiased mapping separately from beacon verification.
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