Co-authored by ARPA Network and Bella Protocol
Randomness has been a defining element of games for millennia. From ancient dice games to modern loot boxes and digital card packs, chance has always injected gameplay with excitement, unpredictability, and risk. But as gaming has evolved from physical to digital, and then from centralized to decentralized, the concept of randomness demands a closer look. After all, how do we know it’s truly fair?
In Web2 gaming, randomness is often a black box and players must accept it without question. But in Web3 that’s powered by transparency and trustlessness, randomness must be verifiable and tamper-proof. That’s exactly the problem ARPA Network’s Randcast was built to solve. And now, with Bella Protocol’s Coinflip game putting Randcast to work on-chain, players can experience first-hand what true fairness in decentralized gaming looks like.
A Brief History of RNG in Games
The idea of using randomness to create game dynamics is nothing new. Before the digital age, randomness was generated through physical objects like dice, cards, or coin flips. These methods were inherently transparent because what you saw was what you got. Fast forward to the digital age, and things began to change. As games migrated online, randomness became a software function that was typically powered by pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs). These algorithms, though effective, are inherently deterministic. Given a seed value, a PRNG can be predicted and even manipulated, especially when controlled by a centralized game operator. In Web2 games, players have no insight into how their odds are determined. The “roll of the dice” happens in a server you can’t see and uses math you can’t audit. This opaqueness has led to significant controversy with eroding trust, from accusations of rigged slot machines to unfair matchmaking and loot box algorithms.
Enter Web3, a paradigm where transparency, decentralization, and user ownership are fundamental. In this new era, randomness must be provably fair. Blockchain infrastructure demands cryptographic proof for everything from transaction ordering to governance voting, and randomness is no exception.
This is where ARPA Network’s Randcast protocol shines. Randcast is a decentralized, verifiable random number generator designed for Web3 applications. It leverages threshold cryptography to ensure that randomness is generated collaboratively and that no single entity, not even ARPA itself, can manipulate the outcome. What makes Randcast different from other randomness solutions is that it provides tamper-proof verifiability. Each random output is paired proof that can be validated to enable fully trustless applications — perfect for gaming, lotteries, NFT minting, governance, and more.
Coinflip by Bella Protocol: A Simple Game, A Powerful Demonstration
One of the most accessible and engaging implementations of Randcast can be found in Bella Protocol’s new Coinflip game, available at coinflip.bella.fi. At first glance, it’s a familiar format: players choose heads or tails, place a bet, and wait for the outcome. But under the hood is where the magic happens.
Each coinflip is powered by Randcast’s verifiable randomness, meaning neither the user nor the game operator can influence the result. The entire process is executed and settled via smart contracts, removing the need for intermediaries or back-end manipulation. Players can even inspect the cryptographic proof behind every flip, offering unprecedented transparency in what would traditionally be a simple wager. The game has already been racking up over 2,200+ daily unique on-chain coin flips and nearly 13,000 RNG outputs over the past week!
The integration also demonstrates the future potential of combining AI, gaming, and decentralized infrastructure. With Coinflip, Bella Protocol proves that even the simplest on-chain interactions can benefit from trustless design.
Looking Ahead: Gaming, AI Agents, and Autonomous Economies
The importance of verifiable randomness in gaming extends far beyond mini-games. As Web3 gaming ecosystems mature, many of their most compelling features such as loot drops, matchmaking, procedurally generated maps, and even AI behaviors will require randomness. Traditional PRNG systems simply aren’t good enough because they rely on trust in centralized operators that often leave users in the dark. Verifiable RNG ensures that no one, not developers, whales, or validators, can rig outcomes. This level of trust is essential in an ecosystem where financial value and user ownership are tightly intertwined. ARPA’s Randcast is already being used across NFT minting events, fair DAO voting mechanisms, and AI model training, but gaming remains one of its most intuitive and immediate use cases.
The combination of verifiable randomness with smart contracts opens up extraordinary possibilities for the emerging world of autonomous agents. Imagine player-owned bots competing in PvP games, each relying on cryptographically fair inputs to make decisions. Or games where loot drops are randomized on-chain. With Bella Protocol pioneering AI agent research, and ARPA providing infrastructure like Randcast, the two ecosystems are perfectly positioned to build the future of fair and decentralized gaming.
About ARPA
ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.
ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.
Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.
For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at [email protected].
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