- ✓QVRF is now live, a Quantum Verifiable Random Function that lets anyone generate true randomness on real quantum hardware and check where every number came from. Every other source asks you to trust someone: a block producer, a secret key, a datasheet, or a panel of trustees.
- ✓The QVRF addresses applications that must be uniquely provable rather than merely asserted: gaming and lotteries, mints and allocation, key generation, and distribution.
- ✓It runs on Quip Network’s second subnet, which pays gate-based quantum computers for random circuit sampling.
- ✓Quantum Echoes is the first QVRF project: a free open edition mint on Ethereum, and the first fully onchain digital art collection seeded on real quantum hardware.
Quip Network has launched QVRF, a Quantum Verifiable Random Function, running on the network’s second subnet. The numbers come from measurements on real quantum hardware, and each one arrives with a record you can check yourself.
True randomness has always been hard to make at scale
Cloudflare points a camera at a wall of lava lamps. Silicon Graphics patented the Lavarand idea in the 1990s, and the reason anyone bothers is that computers are deterministic by design. Real randomness has to come from somewhere outside the machine, and getting enough of it has always been the hard part.
A machine generating randomness for itself has the easier job. It gathers entropy from timing jitter, interrupts and dedicated hardware, and it only ever has to satisfy itself. Onchain, the draw has to convince people who were not there when it happened, and who have every reason to suspect whoever was.
The current state of the art is to combine streams of randomness from several trustees, on the theory that they will not all collude. QVRF rejects that standard of trust, enabling the calculation of entropy to be audited after the fact.
What is QVRF?
A Quantum Verifiable Random Function is a random number that comes with proof of where it came from. Quantum origin alone is not enough, because most quantum random number generators still ask you to take the datasheet on faith. QVRF gives you a record instead, built in four stages.
The samples are committed before the audit set is chosen, which is what stops results being selected after the fact. Scoring uses cross-entropy benchmarking, the statistical measure that compares samples against the ideal output distribution of the circuit that was supposed to have run.
QVRF runs a similar certification method to that published in Nature in 2025 by a JPMorganChase-led team working with Quantinuum, Argonne, Oak Ridge, and UT Austin on a 56-qubit trapped-ion processor.
Where an unprovable draw is a liability
People usually come looking for certified randomness just after someone has asked them a question they could not answer.
What you can independently check
Randomness onchain may come from a pseudorandom generator, a block hash, a classical VRF, or a hardware QRNG. Those that get sold as products differ mainly in what a buyer can verify for themselves after delivery.
Statistical tests, the usual response to an adversarial hardware generator, can only distinguish between uniform randomness and biased outputs. They cannot show that the distribution was produced by a quantum source, and they say nothing about whether the trustee holding the hardware post-selected your randomness.
Turning a benchmark into paid work
Quip Network is a marketplace for quantum computing, where hardware providers pool idle capacity and consumers pay for work. Each subnet sells a different class of workload. The first is quantum optimization, which runs most efficiently on annealers. The second is random circuit sampling, and it gives gate-based machines, the kind IonQ and Quantinuum build, a paid job on the network.
“Random circuit sampling is a benchmarking tool that proves a device is truly quantum, as classical computers cannot replicate it efficiently. We are repurposing this diagnostic to unlock a cryptographically secure random number generation service that powers Quantum Echoes. Every output is derived from a real quantum measurement, and its origin is fully verifiable. This proves that the hardware used can perform useful, paid work on the network, making randomness our second key workload.”
Richard Carback, CTO and co-founder
Quantum Echoes, the first QVRF project
We built Quantum Echoes to demonstrate QVRF in public. It is an open edition on Ethereum and the first Quantum Forged Token, a collectible whose artwork comes from QVRF output rather than from a software seed. The seed is committed before any of the images exist, so nobody, ourselves included, knows what a piece looks like until it is revealed. It mints free on OpenSea on September 14, 2026, and reveals open at echoes.quip.network about a week later.
“We’ve spent the last hundred years telling people that quantum is this spooky and mysterious thing that even the smartest people in the world don’t understand. With Quantum Echoes, we are making multimillion-dollar quantum hardware tangible for everyone. And this isn’t only an art drop. Every mint is a real quantum computer doing useful, paid work.”
Colton Dillion, CEO and co-founder
Where else true randomness applies
Quantum Echoes is the first project built on QVRF, and the demand for true randomness runs wider than art. Risk modeling, volatility forecasting, demand forecasting, and stochastic modeling in biotech all commonly rely on Monte Carlo simulation, which draws thousands of random inputs, so a biased source biases every answer built on it.
Key generation for quantum-resistant wallets and institutional custody has the most direct use for QVRF, because an audit already asks where a key’s entropy came from, and a QVRF output answers that question with its transcript. Certified randomness matters in any of those workloads where someone will later ask where the numbers came from. You can visit our use cases page to see more applications for true, verifiable quantum randomness.
What’s live today
Quip Network ran the reference batch on IonQ hardware through AWS. Here is the status of each piece:
Live now: quantum execution and deterministic circuit generation from the seed manifest.
Also live: the Merkle commitment and the classical audit pipeline, with samples committed before the audit subset is selected.
In development: onchain verification contracts, so a transcript can be verified from a contract rather than from our API.
Coming next: trustee distribution. Quip Network operates both the oracle and the trustee today, and splitting those roles is next.
Until the trustee is split out, you check the transcript rather than trusting the operator.
FAQ
Why is quantum randomness the only true randomness?
A pseudorandom number is decided the moment its seed is, and a classical noise source is unpredictable only because its state is hard to track. In a quantum measurement there is no value waiting to be found in advance.
What makes randomness certified rather than just random?
Random-looking is not the same as certified. Certification adds a timing threshold that rules out classical simulation, and a cross-entropy audit over a subset chosen only after the results were committed.
Can I verify a number after it is delivered?
Yes, and without trusting us. Every output ships with its full transcript, and re-running those checks on your own computer is the certification.
How is a QVRF different from a standard VRF?
A standard VRF derives its output from a private key, so its unpredictability rests on that key staying secret and on elliptic curves staying hard. A QVRF derives its output from a physical measurement, and gives you the transcript to check it against.
Is QVRF post-quantum secure?
Yes. The challenge chain uses hashes and public randomness beacons, so no elliptic-curve key exists anywhere in the pipeline, which leaves nothing in it for Shor’s algorithm to break.
Where does the randomness come from?
The network’s second subnet. Quantum hardware on the network produces randomness as Proof of Useful Work (PoUW), and QVRF wraps that output in the record of how it was made.
What is a QFT?
A Quantum Forged Token: a digital collectible seeded by a measurement on quantum hardware, with a certificate anyone can check. Quantum Echoes is the first one.
Links
→ QVRF: quip.network/qvrf
→ Use cases: quip.network/use-cases
→ Documentation: quip.gitbook.io/docs
→ Quantum Echoes: echoes.quip.network
→ Collection: opensea.io/collection/quantum-echoes
→ Code: github.com/quipnetwork
