Introducing the Verifiable Randomness Solana Plugin

In blockchain applications, getting truly random numbers is surprisingly difficult. Whether building games, raffles, or fair selection mechanisms, you need randomness that everyone can trust—something traditional coding approaches can’t provide.

Today, we’re unveiling our solution: The Verifiable Randomness Function (VRF), a Solana Plugin. This new capability is available to all developers building on Solana, with even greater performance and speed when combined with MagicBlock’s Ephemeral Rollups.

This update is the next feature announced in our rollout of Solana Plugins, which extends Solana’s capabilities with powerful new functions while maintaining full composability with the ecosystem.

Why Is True Randomness So Hard in Blockchain?

Generating true randomness in blockchain environments faces several key challenges:

• Everything must be predictable: Blockchains need all validators to reach the same conclusion, but randomness is unpredictable by nature.
• Trust issues: The system isn’t fair if anyone can predict or influence “random” numbers.
• Proving fairness: Users need to know that random selections weren’t manipulated.
• Speed matters: External solutions are often slow and break the seamless user experience.

Most existing solutions force developers to compromise on one or more of these requirements.

The Verifiable Randomness Solana Plugin: Simple but Powerful

The Verifiable Randomness Solana Plugin solves these challenges with an elegant approach:

1. Your application requests a random number
2. A network of independent oracles collaborates to generate the randomness
3. Mathematical proofs verify that the result is truly random and unmanipulated
4. The verified random value becomes available in your application

The process happens quickly and directly within MagicBlock’s infrastructure, without external services or complex integrations.

VRF + Ephemeral Rollups: A Performance Breakthrough

While the Verifiable Randomness Plugin works well on standard Solana, it truly shines when combined with MagicBlock’s Ephemeral Rollups. Here’s why:

Physical proximity advantage = low latency: When VRF oracles are co-located with your Ephemeral Rollup, the physical distance that data needs to travel is dramatically reduced. Instead of requests and responses traveling across the internet to external oracle networks, they move within the same infrastructure—reducing latency from seconds to milliseconds.

Architectural efficiency = lower gas fees: Our integrated approach requires just a single transaction. This reduces gas costs and complexity, making randomness more affordable and straightforward to implement in your applications.

Customizable environment = faster block times: Ephemeral Rollups allow you to configure faster block times and dedicated compute resources tailored to your application. This means you can process randomness requests in an environment optimized for your specific needs rather than competing with other traffic on the base chain.

For applications where randomness is a critical component—like real-time games or high-frequency mechanisms—these performance advantages become a game-changer, enabling experiences that wouldn’t be possible with traditional approaches.

Real-World Applications

Here are some ideas of what becomes possible with the Verifiable Randomness Solana Plugin:

For Games & NFTs

• Fair loot drops and rewards
• Random game elements and encounters
• NFT trait generation during minting
• Fair winner selection for competitions

For DeFi & Governance

• Random validator or committee selection
• Fair distribution of limited opportunities
• Lottery and raffle mechanisms

Getting Started is Easy

Ready to add verifiable randomness to your Solana application? The process is simple:

1. Build your application using MagicBlock’s Ephemeral Rollups
2. Enable the Verifiable Randomness Solana Plugin
3. Use our straightforward SDK to request and use random values

Our GitHub repository provides comprehensive documentation and examples for developers who want to explore technical details.

Beyond Randomness: The Future of Solana Plugins

The Verifiable Randomness Solana Plugin is just the beginning of what’s possible with our plugin architecture. We’ve already launched additional plugins that enhance what developers can build on Solana:

• Pricing Oracle Plugin: Get real-time, low-latency price feeds directly in your applications
• AI Oracle Plugin: Integrate AI capabilities into your on-chain logic without external dependencies

Each Solana Plugin addresses a key capability gap in the ecosystem, providing developers with powerful tools that simplify building advanced applications.

Start Building with Solana Plugins Today

By using Solana Plugins powered by MagicBlock’s Ephemeral Rollups, developers can focus on freely building innovative experiences without worrying about complex infrastructure challenges.

Verifiable randomness is a foundational building block for the next generation of decentralized applications, and now, it’s natively available on Solana through our plugin system.

Ready to explore randomness for your application? Check out our GitHub repository for everything you need to get started including technical documentation, implementation examples.

Stay tuned as we continue expanding the Solana Plugins ecosystem with more powerful capabilities in the months ahead!