## A Distributed Trustless Coin-Flip Algorithm

A common situation in distributed computing is leader election. Most often, this is achieved by coordinating to pick a random outcome. There are quite a few well-known distributed algorithms for picking a “random” outcome, including FloodMax, and LCR.

Unfortunately, LCR requires that the topology of your nodes is a ring. And, while FloodMax will work even if the topology is not a ring, both algorithms assume that all participants are trustworthy. Both FloodMax, and LCR work by having participants exchange numbers, where the biggest number wins. However, they assume that participants will not specifically pick their number in order to win. If we assume that participants are trying to purposefully win the election, they would each choose as big a number as possible (within the range), thereby deadlocking the election. Furthermore, in order to win, participants might change their selection after seeing other selections.

In order to have a simple leader election process which cannot be “gamed” we must:

• stop participants changing their selection
• stop participants knowing anything about another selection before making their own
• ensure that no selection has any significant advantage over any other
• ensure that no group of participants can collude to influence the outcome

Ideally, the chosen algorithm should be usable for any number of participants.

## The Algorithm

The algorithm presented is divided into two phases. First, each participant publicly commits to their chosen selection without revealing it. Once all participants have completed this phase, they must reveal their selection. Any participant can then combine all selections and verify the outcome.

In describing this algorithm, I’ll be assuming that:

• there is a way of distributing a message at-least-once to all participants
• there is a way of verifying when this has happened
• each participant has a sortable, unique ID
• there is a way of differentiating messages from different participants
• the list of participants is known before beginning

There may be ways around these criteria, but they make it easier to explain the algorithm.

### Phase One - Committing To Their Selections

For a simple example let’s say we have 2 participants (A and B), and each selection may be between 1-100.

First, each participant secretly makes their selection, and computes a hash of it. For this example, I’ll be using sha256 hashing abbreviated to 6 characters, but the specific hashing function chosen is not important to the operation of the algorithm.

Participant  A        B
Selection    6        47
Hash         06e9d5   e3667f


Once generated, each participant broadcasts their hash, but keeps their selection a secret.

This phase is analogous to each participant selecting a playing card, and placing it face-down on the table. All other participants can see they have made a selection, and can tell if they were to try to change it.

After all nodes have received the hashes from all other nodes, phase two commences.

### Phase Two - Reveal Their Selections

Phase two is where each participant then reveals their secret selection. Because they have previously exchanged the hashes, they are already committed to their selections and cannot modify their selection in order to win. Once this phase is completed all nodes know the selections of all other nodes.

They may then combine the selections to compute the resulting outcome:

Participant  A        B
Selection    6        47
Combined        6*47 = 282
Combined Hash  769c72


In order for all participants to reach the same outcome, the combining function must be the same, and should account for receiving the hashes in a differing order. I’ve used multiplication here, because it is associative and commutative. You could reach a similar outcome with other functions by sorting the selections.

Because the outcome of our hashing algorithm is indistinguishable from a pseudo-random selection, we have generated a pseudo-random hash (in this case, 769c72). This is analogous to a coin-flip, or rolling a N-sided die.

If we wish to elect a leader based on this information, we could divide up the outcome range among the participants, and assign the winner. For example, because we have 2 participants, we can divide the outcome into 2 spaces: odd for A, and even for B. Then, any participant can look at the first digit of the outcome, note that it is 7, which is odd, and determine that A has been elected the new leader.

## Summary, Caveats, and Additional Notes

I’ve skipped over several very important implementation details, such as: selecting the “win-condition” for each participant, and agreeing on each participant’s ID. But, different implementation spaces provide answers to this. For example, if the participants were communicating via a blockchain, they would naturally have sortable IDs and easily be able to divide up the “win-conditions” fairly.

As presented, the selections are random. This means each time the election is run the outcome will be random. If you wished to introduce more stability into the system you might think that using a persistent selection on each node (say some system UUID) would provide that. However, this creates a way for participants to gain an advantage in repeated elections because they can remember the selections of other nodes.

I’ve also elided adding a “salt” to the hashes to prevent leakage of information. This is because I’ve assumed that (in real implementation) the selection range is large enough that any two nodes picking the same number is unlikely. If your selection range is small, you should add a salt to the broadcast hashes, to ensure that rainbow-tables cannot be built to allow participants an unfair advantage.

This is a very simple algorithm for a trustless distributed coin-flip (or die-roll). In the example I’ve applied it to a leader-election scenario, but it is more general, and results in a trustless group-selection of a random outcome.

As far as I know this algorithm is unique, but if you know of any others, or if you think this algorithm is a variant of some other, I would love to know! Any improvements, or feedback are welcome.