A case for running a DRAND node
Why bitcoin noderunners should also run a Drand instance
Before anyone goes like: “Ah, no here’s an altcoin’er trying to sell me some new token”,
NO!
I’m not selling you anything.
Drand is a random utility network and system.
It has no central server, it has no token, no “coin” or other economic shenanigans, it runs on its own blockchain network. It is open-source and delivers a splendid utility to the world.
In my opinion, today an necessary complementary system to running alongside your bitcoin node. It’s a Golang-based daemon with minimal compute.
So, what is DRAND?
A drand Network is composed of individual and independent drand Nodes that generate randomness by networking with other distributed nodes. The randomness is published to the world with the help of drand Relays.
How did it came to be?
Global public good
The drand network, powered by the open-source drand protocol (short for “decentralized randomness”), originated as a research project to address the vulnerabilities of centralized randomness sources.
These include risks of manipulation or compromise, as seen in real-world cases like the 2015 Hot Lotto fraud scandal (where a centralized system was rigged) and implicit trust issues with services like the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) public randomness beacon.
The network’s evolution reflects a shift from academic proof-of-concept to a global public good, emphasizing decentralization to mitigate biases in centralized alternatives.
Drand was spearheaded by Nicolas Gailly in the Distributed and Decentralized Systems (DEDIS) Lab at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
It built on prior academic work in decentralized randomness from researchers at Yale University and EPFL, focusing on cryptographic techniques like threshold signatures in order to generate collective random values without a single point of failure. Something that every bitcoiner should like.
Around 2018, the DEDIS team partnered with DFINITY (a blockchain research organization) to refine the protocol, making it more efficient for real-world use. This involved advancing BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) signature schemes, which allow a group of nodes to produce verifiable randomness without revealing private keys.
LoE (2019)
To operationalize drand, a voluntary consortium called the League of Entropy (LoE) was formed as the primary network operator.
Founding members included Cloudflare, Protocol Labs (Gailly’s employer at the time), Universidad de Chile, EPFL, and Kudelski Security. The LoE aimed to distribute nodes geographically for resilience. The production-ready mainnet launched in mid-2019, with a one-year anniversary celebrated in August 2020. Early nodes incorporated unique entropy sources, like Cloudflare’s LavaRand (derived from lava lamp chaos).
Growth and adoption (2020–present)
The network expanded to over 20 active members, including the Ethereum Foundation, Filecoin Foundation, ChainSafe, cLabs (Celo), Gelato Network, and Zama. It’s integrated into major projects like Filecoin (for leader election in proof-of-replication) and other blockchains for unbiased randomness in smart contracts, lotteries, and gaming. As of 2025, drand remains free and open-source, with ongoing contributions via GitHub.
Core goals
Technical foundation: Every 30 seconds (configurable), nodes generate partial BLS signatures on a time-based nonce{c}, aggregate them into a verifiable random value, and broadcast it. This ensures low latency (~1–2 seconds) and scalability.
Unbiased and unpredictable randomness: No single party can predict, bias, or withhold outputs; verifiable via public keys.
Decentralization and resilience: Global node distribution resists censorship, DDoS, or collusion (threshold protects against up to ~20% malicious nodes).
Public verifiability and availability: Outputs are tamper-proof and always-on, serving as “Randomness as a Service” (RaaS) for apps.
Funding and operations
Initial development at EPFL’s DEDIS Lab was likely funded through academic grants (e.g., Swiss National Science Foundation or EU Horizon programs, common for cryptographic research). Protocol Labs, a key backer, funds open-source initiatives via its research arm, including grants for tools like IPFS/Filecoin ecosystem projects who chose to use DRAND for their operations, like many other projects.
Operational costs (node hosting, maintenance) are covered by members like Cloudflare (infrastructure expertise) and Kudelski Security (security audits). No central treasury exists; it’s a cost-sharing model among volunteers. Related entities like Randamu (a 2024 spinout stewarding drand protocol maintenance) raised $3.3M in pre-seed funding led by Protocol Labs Venture Studio, but this is for commercialization, not core network ops.
Why should I participate as a Bitcoiner?
If you run a Bitcoin full node, you already verify everything yourself anyway right?
Drand would give you even more: the power for generating true random numbers: it creates fresh, tamper-proof randomness every 30 seconds that anyone can check, with nothing-up-my-sleeve numbers.
Example uses:
Travel-safe encryption When you cross borders with a hardware wallet you can use a better (non-hardware version): encrypt your seed phrase (or a piece of it) using a drand random number that hasn’t appeared yet.
Even if customs opens your laptop, the file looks like gibberish until that exact future drand value is published online, and why would they find a small blob of data anyway?
Then you (and only you) can unlock it.
Time-locked backups Split your wallet into a multisig (say 2-of-3). Encrypt one key share with a drand value due in 6 months. Hide the encrypted blob anywhere; it auto-unlocks on the set date without needing a lawyer or escrow service.
Zero extra trust, tiny cost
Running drand alongside Bitcoin Core uses less than 100 MB of RAM and no fees.
You become your own randomness “provider”, perfect for secure travel, delayed inheritance, encrypting data, or private messaging
And it’s still 100 % “don’t trust, verify.”
How do I start to use it?
Check :
https://docs.drand.love/operator/docker/
https://github.com/drand/drand
AVB