---
description: Understand the cryptography behind drand.
title: Cryptographic Background
image: https://developers.cloudflare.com/og-docs.png
---

[Skip to content](#main-content)

> Documentation Index  
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developers.cloudflare.com/randomness-beacon/llms.txt  
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Cryptographic Background

Last updated Aug 24, 2026|Copy as Markdown|[View as Markdown](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/randomness-beacon/cryptographic-background/index.md)|[Agent setup](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/agent-setup/)

drand is an efficient randomness beacon daemon that utilizes pairing-based cryptography, `𝑡-of-𝑛` distributed key generation, and threshold BLS signatures to generate publicly-verifiable, unbiasable, unpredictable, distributed randomness.

This is an overview of the cryptographic building blocks drand uses to generate publicly-verifiable, unbiasable, and unpredictable randomness in a distributed manner.

The drand beacon has two phases: a setup phase and a beacon phase. Generally, we assume that there are _n_ participants, out of which at most _f<n_ are malicious. drand relies heavily on threshold cryptography primitives, where (at minimum) a threshold of _t-f+1_ nodes work together to successfully execute cryptographic operations.

Threshold cryptography has many applications as it avoids single points of failure. One application is cryptocurrency multi-sig wallets, where _t-of-n_ participants are required to sign a transaction using a threshold signature scheme.

Note

This document is intended for a general audience. No cryptographic background knowledge is required to understand these concepts.

Was this helpful?

YesNo

## On this page

[![](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/_astro/logo.te5VL_aD.svg)Docs](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/)

```json
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","@id":"https://developers.cloudflare.com/randomness-beacon/cryptographic-background/#page","headline":"Cryptographic Background · Cloudflare Randomness Beacon docs","description":"Understand the cryptography behind drand.","url":"https://developers.cloudflare.com/randomness-beacon/cryptographic-background/","inLanguage":"en","image":"https://developers.cloudflare.com/og-docs.png","dateModified":"2026-08-24","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Cloudflare","description":"One platform for your apps, agents, and workforce. Build, secure, and scale without managing infrastructure","url":"https://www.cloudflare.com/","sameAs":["https://github.com/cloudflare","https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudflare","https://x.com/cloudflare"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://developers.cloudflare.com/logo.svg"},"address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","streetAddress":"101 Townsend St","addressLocality":"San Francisco","addressRegion":"CA","postalCode":"94107","addressCountry":"US"},"contactPoint":[{"@type":"ContactPoint","contactType":"Customer Support","url":"https://support.cloudflare.com/","availableLanguage":["English"]},{"@type":"ContactPoint","contactType":"Sales","url":"https://www.cloudflare.com/contact/","availableLanguage":["English"]}]},"isPartOf":{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://developers.cloudflare.com/#website","name":"Cloudflare Docs","url":"https://developers.cloudflare.com/"}}
```