Argon Using Chainlink VRF to Access Verifiably Fair Random Numbers in its Smart Contracts

3 min readAug 23, 2021

We’re excited to announce that Argon — a blockchain-based freelancer platform on Binance Smart Chain that allows freelancers to receive fair pay for their work without sharing profits with third-party providers — has integrated Chainlink Verifiable Random Function (VRF) to support our community draws. By integrating Chainlink’s industry-leading decentralized oracle network, we now have access to a tamper-proof and auditable source of randomness needed to fairly and unbiasedly select winners in community draws. Ultimately this creates a more exciting, transparent, and fraud-proof user experience, as users can be confident that winners were chosen in a truly random manner.

In order to create a fun and gamified user experience for our freelancer platform, we wanted to create a lucky draw game for our community. Users can buy tickets, which combine to make up the total prize pool. 80 percent of the prize pool is distributed to 64 people as prize winnings, while the remaining 20 percent is sent to the burn wallet and is added to Argon’s regular burn event every six months. The random drawing process is entirely variable; to get more information visit here.

In order to fairly pick winners of the draw, we need access to a secure random number generator (RNG) that any user could independently audit. However, RNG solutions for smart contracts require several security considerations to prevent manipulation and ensure system integrity. For instance, RNG solutions using on-chain data like block hashes can be exploited by blockchain miners, while off-chain RNG solutions like traditional data providers are opaque and don’t provide users with definitive proof about the integrity of the process.

After reviewing various solutions, we selected Chainlink VRF because it’s based on cutting-edge academic research, supported by Chainlink’s time-tested oracle infrastructure, and secured through the generation and on-chain verification of cryptographic proofs that prove the integrity of each random number supplied to smart contracts.

Chainlink VRF works by combining block data that is still unknown when the request is made with the oracle node’s pre-committed private key to generate both a random number and a cryptographic proof. Argon’s smart contract will only accept the random number input if it has a valid cryptographic proof, and the cryptographic proof can only be generated if the VRF process is tamper-proof. This provides our users with automated and verifiable assurances directly on-chain that the Argon giveaway is provably fair and cannot be tampered with by the oracle, outside entities, or the Argon team.

“Chainlink is one of the most prominent projects in the crypto space, and we are excited to integrate their VRF technology. It’s easy to integrate, solves randomness concerns, and creates a fair and sustainable ecosystem for the users participating in Argon draws.”

Ahmet Oznar, Founder of Argon

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry standard oracle network for powering hybrid smart contracts. Chainlink Decentralized Oracle Networks provide developers with the largest collection of high-quality data sources and secure off-chain computations to expand the capabilities of smart contracts on any blockchain. Managed by a global, decentralized community, Chainlink currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance, gaming, and other major industries.

Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations, from global enterprises to projects at the forefront of the blockchain economy, to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable oracle networks. To learn more about Chainlink, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter. To understand the full vision of the Chainlink Network, read the Chainlink 2.0 whitepaper.

About Argon

The world’s first blockchain-based freelancer platform on the Binance Smart Chain network, working with smart contracts and fully decentralized.

At the same time, we are trying to create a burn-and-buy-back ecosystem to keep up with the crypto market just like other de-fi solutions or giveaways.

Argon Using Chainlink VRF to Access Verifiably Fair Random Numbers in its Smart Contracts

Written by Argon