bmilleare/drand-php

A PHP client for the drand distributed randomness beacon network with BLS12-381 signature verification.

v0.1.0 2026-05-30 11:47 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.2
• ext-json: *
• psr/http-client: ^1.0
• psr/http-factory: ^1.0
• psr/http-message: ^1.1 || ^2.0

Requires (Dev)

• guzzlehttp/guzzle: ^7.8
• phpunit/phpunit: ^10.5 || ^11.0

Suggests

• ext-ffi: Enables the high-performance blst verifier backend (needs the libblst shared library).
• ext-gmp: Required by the pure-PHP BLS12-381 verifier (the default, native-library-free backend).
• guzzlehttp/guzzle: A PSR-18 HTTP client; any PSR-18 client works. Falls back to a bundled cURL client if none is provided.

MIT

• Ben Milleare

• beacon
• bls
• randomness
• drand
• bls12-381
• league-of-entropy
• verifiable-randomness
• vrf

README

A PHP client for the drand distributed randomness beacon network (the League of Entropy), with cryptographic verification of the BLS12-381 threshold signatures.

drand-php is fail-closed: latest() and round() return a beacon only when its signature verifies against the chain's distributed public key — otherwise they throw. You never get unverified randomness by accident.

use Bmilleare\Drand\DrandClient;

$client = DrandClient::create($httpClient, $httpFactory, beaconId: 'quicknet');

$beacon = $client->latest();           // fetched AND verified
echo $beacon->round, PHP_EOL;          // e.g. 29110875
echo $beacon->randomnessHex(), PHP_EOL; // 32-byte verifiable random value

Features

• Fetch randomness from any drand relay over the v2 (and v1) HTTP API.
• Verify BLS12-381 signatures for all three League-of-Entropy schemes.
• Two interchangeable verification backends behind one interface:
  • blst — the audited supranational/blst C library via FFI (fast).
  • pure-PHP — a dependency-free backend using ext-gmp (portable).
• PSR-18 / PSR-17 transport: bring your own HTTP client (Guzzle, Symfony, ...) or use the bundled cURL client.
• Round/time helpers: compute the round at any timestamp and vice-versa.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• ext-json, ext-curl (for the bundled HTTP client)
• A verification backend (at least one):
  • ext-ffi + a libblst shared library, or
  • ext-gmp (pure-PHP backend)

Installation

composer require bmilleare/drand-php

Verification backend

The client refuses to run without a working verification backend (it throws VerifierUnavailableException). Enable one:

Option A — blst (fast): enable ext-ffi and provide a libblst shared library. Build it once:

php vendor/bmilleare/drand-php/bin/install-blst.php
# builds resources/lib/libblst.<so|dylib|dll>

(or build blst yourself with ./build.sh -shared and point BlstVerifier at the resulting library).

Option B — pure-PHP (portable): install ext-gmp. No native library needed.

VerifierFactory::auto() prefers blst when available and falls back to pure-PHP.

Usage

Quick start

use Bmilleare\Drand\DrandClient;
use Bmilleare\Drand\Http\CurlHttpClient;
use GuzzleHttp\Psr7\HttpFactory; // any PSR-17 factory

$factory = new HttpFactory();
$http    = new CurlHttpClient($factory, $factory);

$client = DrandClient::create($http, $factory, beaconId: 'quicknet');

$beacon = $client->latest();
printf("round %d: %s\n", $beacon->round, $beacon->randomnessHex());

A specific round

$beacon = $client->round(29110875);   // verified, or throws InvalidSignatureException

Verify a beacon you already have

if ($client->verify($beacon)) {
    // signature is valid
}

Round / time math

$info = $client->chainInfo();
$round = $info->roundAt(time());      // current round number
$emittedAt = $info->timeOfRound($round);

Beacons and schemes

The League of Entropy mainnet runs these chains:

Beacon	Scheme	Period	Signature	Public key	Message
quicknet	bls-unchained-g1-rfc9380	3s	G1 (48 B)	G2 (96 B)	sha256(round)
default	pedersen-bls-chained	30s	G2 (96 B)	G1 (48 B)	sha256(prev‖round)

quicknet is recommended for new applications: it is unchained (statelessly verifiable) and has smaller, faster signatures. The randomness for every scheme is sha256(signature).

Security

• Fail-closed by design. The client never returns an unverified beacon. A verification failure raises InvalidSignatureException; an environment with no backend raises VerifierUnavailableException.
• Pin the chain hash / public key you expect for production use, and fetch chain info over a trusted channel — a malicious relay could otherwise serve a self-consistent fake chain.
• The blst backend uses an audited C library. The pure-PHP backend is a from-scratch implementation provided for portability; prefer blst where you can.

Testing

composer install
vendor/bin/phpunit                      # all tests (network tests skip if offline)
vendor/bin/phpunit --testsuite unit     # offline only

Cryptographic correctness is pinned by tests that verify genuine captured beacons (positive vectors) and reject tampered ones (negative vectors).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.