About
What this is
This is a reference site about Verifiable Delay Functions — the
cryptographic primitive formalized by Boneh, Bonneau, Bünz, and Fisch at
CRYPTO 2018 — not an organization. “vdf.foundation” is a domain name chosen
for the topic, in the same .foundation style as other single-topic
reference sites in this small network (see below) — it isn’t the name of an
institution, and nothing on this site should be read as one.
Why it exists
VDFs sit at an unusual intersection: a genuinely new cryptographic primitive, a small number of production deployments (Chia’s Proof of Time being the clearest), and a construction — repeated squaring in a group of unknown order — that’s easy to state and easy to misunderstand. Most explanations either stay at the “it’s like a time-lock” analogy level or jump straight to the Wesolowski proof’s algebra without ever letting you run it. This site tries to close that gap: a plain-spoken explanation, backed by working code and a live Eval/Proof/Verify demo you can actually run in your own browser, aimed at engineers rather than cryptographers.
Every historical claim and citation on this site is sourced to a specific paper or primary reference (see History and Further reading); nothing is stated from memory without a source. The interactive demo computes real values in your browser — see Interactive and Code — nothing is mocked or precomputed.
Part of a small network of reference sites
This site shares its design and editorial approach with a small, growing set of independent reference sites on specific cryptographic primitives: Pedersen Commitments, on Torben Pedersen’s commitment scheme, Garbled Circuits, on Yao’s garbled circuits, and zkSNARK, on zk-SNARKs. Each covers one topic; none of them is an organization, and they aren’t affiliated with each other beyond sharing a template.
Who maintains this
This is an independent educational project maintained by one person, with public source and open contributions (see below). It is not affiliated with Dan Boneh, Joseph Bonneau, Benedikt Bünz, Ben Fisch, Benjamin Wesolowski, Krzysztof Pietrzak, Chia Network, IACR, CRYPTO, or any of the other researchers and organizations whose work it cites and links to.
Proposing a correction or addition
The site’s source is public on GitHub at github.com/Qubitpower/vdf-foundation. If you spot an error — a wrong date, a broken link, a math mistake in the demo — please open an issue or a pull request there.