What Is Chainlink VRF?

Chainlink being a consensus-based protocol has revolutionized the concept of offering complete decentralization through its Oracles, which play an important part in operating the network. It’s already proven how Chainlink oracles enhance the performance and functionality of smart contracts to offer far greater amount of transparency and security than general systems. 

Chainlink Verifiable Random (VRF)

It is felt that in blockchain-based gaming and NFT space, there is a requirement for a tamperproof and trustworthy source for performing advanced functionalities. Chainlink’s Verifiable Random (VRF) works to address this requirement through Decentralized Oracle Network (DON) which provides verified off-chain data.

Chainlink VRF even assists the blockchain ecosystem in the transfer of data beyond its network to another external network. The ability of Chainlink VRF to offers randomness while cryptographically securing data is made possible by employing a set of nodes those relay data to smart contracts. VRF makes this possible by through a mechanism known as classical consensus, that functions through a committee of such nodes.

For Smart Contracts, Chainlink’s VRF provides the random number generation (RNG), where it assists developers to build better experiences by utilizing random outcomes in their dApps. These Chainlink VRF-provided RNGs are fully tamperproof, which can’t be influenced by a malicious entity or any rouge node operator, as in DON every oracle has an associated pair of keys in private and public sections respectively. Further, in the system, the different types of keys are maintained separately like private keys maintained in the off-chain and on-chain published publicly. 

How does Chainlink VRF works?

Chainlink’s VRF is utilized by smart contracts for obtaining a secure and verifiable random number following ways –

For generating a random and unpredictable value, two keys are used to overcome the issues faced by general RNG solutions that rely upon an insecure off-chain processes. The VRF offers tamper-proof results by combining block data of on-chains by the cryptographic verification, which happens on-chain and is further used as input to provide immutable and unbiased results. The results are even safe in case they fall victim to compromised oracles of their own network.

Due to its reliable and superior capabilities, Chainlink VRF development is utilized in building a smart contract application for DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and other gamified fintech dApps, that would be truly reliable. 

What is Chainlink VRF v2?

Chainlink VRF v2 is an updated and improved version of the earlier Chainlink VRF through its DONs. The changes brought in Chainlink’s improved VRF version 2 are about how developers can request randomness for their smart contracts while having the ability to generate multiple random outputs in a single on-chain transaction.

Now with this upgrade, there are changes like a reduction in transaction costs, while allowing them to fund and at the same time request for verifiable randomness up to 100 smart contract addresses. All this can be initiated and managed by subscription owners or developers through an account of single LINK subscription balance.

There is also an additional functionality that lets developers in pre-funding multiple requests for randomness and that can be done by utilizing a single LINK token balance. As this eliminates the need to transfer tokens every time for each request happening, so that the applicable fees are reduced.

Whenever, the smart contract applications obtain verified randomness, developers are even authorized to adjust the limit for callback gas. In this way the Chainlink VRF can let more callback request function which are more complex logic in the nature. 

Conclusion

The constant improvements by Chainlink have made the application of VRF a preferred choice for developing dApps by developers. A senior Chainlink developer at Rejolut, in fact, says that Chainlink has been true to its promises of enabling developers to create more practical dApps and is probably introducing those practices that make blockchain-based dApps more secure.

Chainlink takes blockchain technology a step forward in connecting it with external data feeds through oracles in s more secure manner and this certainly will push the blockchain and Metaverse integration together.