HTTP API reference

Drand provides a JSON HTTP interface that clients can use to fetch randomness from the drand network. If you're using drand in an application, it may be easier and more secure to use one of the client libraries, which will also perform verification of randomness rounds and add additional features like failover, racing, aggregation, and caching.

All that's required is the address of the HTTP interface and way to fetch from HTTP, e.g. curl.

Public endpoints

The public League of Entropy (opens new window) HTTP APIs are available at:

• Protocol Labs
  • https://api.drand.sh (opens new window)
  • https://api2.drand.sh (opens new window)
  • https://api3.drand.sh (opens new window)
• Cloudflare
  • https://drand.cloudflare.com (opens new window)

The chain hash for the League of Entropy drand group is:

8990e7a9aaed2ffed73dbd7092123d6f289930540d7651336225dc172e51b2ce

/info

Retrieves the randomness chain information. It returns a JSON object with the following structure:

{
  "public_key": "868f005eb8e6e4ca0a47c8a77ceaa5309a47978a7c71bc5cce96366b5d7a569937c529eeda66c7293784a9402801af31",
  "period": 30,
  "genesis_time": 1595431050,
  "hash": "8990e7a9aaed2ffed73dbd7092123d6f289930540d7651336225dc172e51b2ce"
}

• public_key is the distributed public key of the drand group
• period is the time in seconds between randomness beacon rounds
• genesis_time is the time in seconds since the Unix Epoch that the group began generating randomness
• hash is the chain hash, which uniquely identifies the drand chain. It is used as a root of trust for validation of the first round of randomness.

/public/latest

Retrives the latest round of randomness. It returns a JSON object with the following structure:

{
  "round": 367,
  "randomness": "3439d92d58e47d342131d446a3abe264396dd264717897af30525c98408c834f",
  "signature": "90957ebc0719f8bfb67640aff8ca219bf9f2c5240e60a8711c968d93370d38f87b38ed234a8c63863eb81f234efce55b047478848c0de025527b3d3476dfe860632c1b799550de50a6b9540463e9fb66c8016b89c04a9f52dabdc988e69463c1",
  "previous_signature": "859504eade86790ad09b2b3474d5e09d1718b549ef7107d7bbd18f5e221765ce8252d7db02664c1f6b20f40c6e8e138704d2acfeb6c5abcc14c77e3a842b2f84515e7366248ca37b1460d23b4f98493c246fbb02851f2a43a710c968a349f8d6"
}

• round is an sequentially increasing integer - the randomness round index
• randomness is a SHA-256 hash of the signature
• signature is the Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature for this round of randomness
• previous_signature is the signature of the previous round of randomness

/public/{round}

Retrieves a previous round of randomness identified by the positive integer round. Note that specifying 0 will retrieve the latest round. It returns a JSON object with the following structure:

{
  "round": 367,
  "randomness": "3439d92d58e47d342131d446a3abe264396dd264717897af30525c98408c834f",
  "signature": "90957ebc0719f8bfb67640aff8ca219bf9f2c5240e60a8711c968d93370d38f87b38ed234a8c63863eb81f234efce55b047478848c0de025527b3d3476dfe860632c1b799550de50a6b9540463e9fb66c8016b89c04a9f52dabdc988e69463c1",
  "previous_signature": "859504eade86790ad09b2b3474d5e09d1718b549ef7107d7bbd18f5e221765ce8252d7db02664c1f6b20f40c6e8e138704d2acfeb6c5abcc14c77e3a842b2f84515e7366248ca37b1460d23b4f98493c246fbb02851f2a43a710c968a349f8d6"
}

• round is an sequentially increasing integer - the randomness round index
• randomness is a SHA-256 hash of the signature
• signature is the Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature for this round of randomness
• previous_signature is the signature of the previous round of randomness