ZCash uses nuclear waste from Chernobyl to generate random numbers

At the recent ZCash event, the organizers processed nuclear waste from Chernobyl to generate random series of numbers.

That security and anonymity in the crypto-ecosystem does not always work as foreseen, the attacks on Coincheck from the weekend. The convenience of some IOTA users who generated their seeds online was also punished by hackers recently. ZCash takes on this problem in an innovative way.

Admittedly, it sees a bit over the top. In a plane, selected developers and employees of ZCash meet and generate radioactive random sequences of numbers. However, her approach is always interesting.

For example, developers of the cryptocurrency ZCash took the word "coincidence" to a new level in their "Powers of Tau" event. The event took place more than 1,000 meters above sea level in an airplane - a first hurdle for potential attackers.

As a next hurdle, they used graphite from a former nuclear reactor in Chernobyl for their extraordinary project. The graphite moderator was the source of low gamma and beta radiation here. These have then been coupled to a Geiger counter, which in turn is combined with a number generator. In the end, numbers were generated by the radioactive rays, which are no longer so easy to understand.

Additional random measures
As can be seen from the developers, the graphite emitted a very low level of radiation while remaining consistently below the threshold, which could cause health risks. Ryan Pierce, on what the idea goes, explained in this context that this radiation did not exceed the usual radiation on the earth.

But that was not enough for the ZCash team. To paradoxically check the randomness of numbers, they ran a battery-powered number generator parallel to their instrument to compare the data collected. To top it off, the participants still want to destroy all the hardware involved in the process - for sure.