Research corpus Data and agentsBLC-STUDY-0132

On Bitcoin as a Public Randomness Source

The paper asks when a proof-of-work block hash is a safe public beacon, and how a miner can bias it by withholding or grinding.

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Record

Authors: Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder
Date: 2015
Publisher: Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder
Version: Source cited by the 2015 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0132
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.

Direct answer

The paper asks when a proof-of-work block hash is a safe public beacon, and how a miner can bias it by withholding or grinding.

Where to read

Official source — ePrint 2015/1015
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

What changed

A reading of the public paper. Not a copy, not a benchmark, and not a claim about any later network.

Relationships

Canonical readingBitcoin as a beacon study
Related paperVerifiable delay functions
Related paperBitcoin Backbone

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Bonneau, J., Clark, J., & Goldfeder, S. (2015). On Bitcoin as a Public Randomness Source. Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder. https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1015

BibTeX

@techreport{bitcoinbeacon2015,
  title = {On Bitcoin as a Public Randomness Source},
  author = {Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder},
  year = {2015},
  institution = {Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1015},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/bitcoin-beacon}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - On Bitcoin as a Public Randomness Source
AU  - Joseph Bonneau
AU  - Jeremy Clark
AU  - Steven Goldfeder
PY  - 2015
PB  - Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder
UR  - https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1015
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0132",
    "title": "On Bitcoin as a Public Randomness Source",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Joseph Bonneau"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Jeremy Clark"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Steven Goldfeder"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2015
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Joseph Bonneau, Jeremy Clark and Steven Goldfeder",
    "URL": "https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1015",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections