Applications of certified randomness

The use of randomness is ubiquitous in our society, including jury pool selection, encryption of digital communications, and many other activities. However, in many applications, there is an incentive for malicious actors to influence or predict the randomness. Therefore, it is beneficial if the trustworthiness, unpredictability and security of the randomness can be certified by any participant that does not trust the randomness provider. Certified randomness can be generated with untrusted remote quantum computers using multiple known protocols, one of which has recently been realized experimentally. Unlike the randomness sources accessible on today’s classical computers, the output of these protocols can be certified to be random under certain computational hardness assumptions, with no trust required in the hardware generating the randomness. In this Perspective, we explore real-world applications for which the use of certified randomness protocols may lead to improved security and fairness. We identify promising applications in areas including cryptography, differential privacy, financial markets and blockchain. Randomness is used in many applications where unpredictability is often paramount to ensure fairness and security. This Perspective discusses how quantum computation can generate certified randomness that can be verified by any participant and introduces several applications that can benefit from it.