Ideal Network: The Randomness Layer for Polkadot's World Computer

We're excited to propose the Ideal Network (IDN), a foundational randomness infrastructure for Polkadot's ecosystem. Our team, formed during the Polkadot Blockchain Academy in Buenos Aires, includes Juan Girini (former Parity FRAME Core Engineer), Tony Riemer (Lead Protocol Engineer), Carlos Montoya (Serial Entrepreneur), and Coleman Irby (Software Engineer).

>> Full proposal available here <<

The Problem

Polkadot lacks a comprehensive verifiable randomness solution, with several key limitations in the ecosystem:

Block Hash Limitations:
- Proven security vulnerabilities (e.g. $150M Fomo3D exploit)
- OWASP top 10 smart contract vulnerability
- Vulnerable to block producer manipulation
- Widely used despite known risks
VRF Implementation Issues:
- High complexity and lack of standardization
- Vulnerable to block author manipulation
- Requires complex multi-collator coordination
BABE VRF Constraints:
- Limited to 4-hour block producer selection cycles
- Long delays between generation and availability
- Manipulation risks
System Barriers:
- High costs and implementation overhead
- Significant latency issues
- Poor cross-parachain compatibility
Missing Timelock Features:
- No built-in future randomness encryption
- Limited support for commit-reveal protocols
- Inadequate trustless multi-party coordination

Our Solution

IDN will serve as the standardized randomness layer for Polkadot's World Computer by providing:

A trustless bridge to Drand's distributed randomness beacon
Timelock encryption capabilities
Subscription-based and on-demand randomness delivery
Smart contract integration through ink!
Pallet integration for runtimes

Traction

Our work is supported through collaborations with Web3 Foundation, NIST, and the University of Colorado. We've completed a Web3 Foundation grant, participated in the Decentralized Futures program, and received retroactive funding from the Kusama treasury.

Several projects have expressed interest in integration, including:

Asset Hub	Parity's Contracts team seeks to integrate high-quality randomness into Asset Hub through precompiles for secure contract features. Their vision focuses on providing developers with a simple, cost-effective interface to request random bytes, dramatically reducing costs compared to existing solutions like Chainlink VRF.
Bittensor	Bittensor, a Substrate-based blockchain for decentralized machine learning, has already integrated our Drand-bridge pallet and timelock encryption bindings into their commit-reveal V3 scheme that went into production. This collaboration showcases our solution's practical utility in enhancing the security of decentralized machine learning networks.
ChainSafe	ChainSafe has expressed interest in collaborating to explore blockchain-native gaming frameworks, leveraging our timelock encryption and verifiable randomness capabilities.
PolkaStorage	PolkaStorage is exploring randomness solutions for their consensus system. They require secure randomness for their Storage Challenge Mechanism, Proof of Replication (PoRep), and Proof of Spacetime (PoSt) to prevent storage providers from discarding files or pre-computing fake proofs.

Asset Hub

Parity's Contracts team seeks to integrate high-quality randomness into Asset Hub through precompiles for secure contract features. Their vision focuses on providing developers with a simple, cost-effective interface to request random bytes, dramatically reducing costs compared to existing solutions like Chainlink VRF.

Bittensor

Bittensor, a Substrate-based blockchain for decentralized machine learning, has already integrated our Drand-bridge pallet and timelock encryption bindings into their commit-reveal V3 scheme that went into production. This collaboration showcases our solution's practical utility in enhancing the security of decentralized machine learning networks.

ChainSafe

ChainSafe has expressed interest in collaborating to explore blockchain-native gaming frameworks, leveraging our timelock encryption and verifiable randomness capabilities.

PolkaStorage

PolkaStorage is exploring randomness solutions for their consensus system. They require secure randomness for their Storage Challenge Mechanism, Proof of Replication (PoRep), and Proof of Spacetime (PoSt) to prevent storage providers from discarding files or pre-computing fake proofs.

Use Cases

IDN enables critical functionality across:

Protocol Security: Secure validator selection, fair leader election, MEV elimination
DeFi: Atomic asset swaps, fair candle auctions, unbiased liquidity pool rebalancing
Gaming: Verifiable random drops, provably fair card shuffling, hidden player actions
Governance: Random committee selection, unbiased sampling for polls, voting reveals
NFTs: Unpredictable seeds for algorithmic NFTs, preventing rarity manipulation
Token Distribution: Fair airdrop selection, unbiased snapshot timing, reward allocation

Contribution to the Ecosystem

IDN will provide essential infrastructure for Polkadot's World Computer by:

Serving as the ecosystem's standardized randomness layer
Reducing infrastructure costs through shared resources
Enabling timelock encryption capabilities
Eliminating the need for each parachain to implement its own solution

Budget & Deliverables

We're requesting 294,585 USDC + 840 DOT to deliver:

Trustless Drand Bridge
Cross-chain randomness delivery infrastructure
Security audit by SRLabs
Network deployment and maintenance

Contact

Discord: https://discord.gg/phZvQkzU2a
Element: https://matrix.to/#/#idn-community:matrix.org
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://idealabs.network

We welcome your questions and feedback on this discussion post.