Protocol Labs has entered into partnership with the Ethereum Foundation to research Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) for the purpose of internal security enhancement.

Essentially, a VDF is a cryptographic function that consists of sequential computing steps yet efficiently verified by validators and their counterparts. VDFs are often deployed to help protect randomness beacon-based systems, like blockchain lottery, against data manipulation or attacks.

According to Protocol Labs, VDFs are relatively new, so there needs to be more research to enhance their performance and security, as such instruments are still quite vulnerable to certain custom technologies.

“This is an investment towards building publicly-verifiable randomness and VDFs as novel tools in the arsenals of cryptographers and decentralization projects,” the research team claimed. Such development, the team said, could be a major advancement far beyond the blockchain industry.

Both partners are reportedly planning to give research grants to find out whether developing a special hardware for operating VDFs is feasible, which would purportedly kill off known uncertainty responsible for the verifiable delay period “based on the speed and quality of the hardware being used to generate it,” the post reads.

This gave birth to an informative website, dubbed vdfresearch.org, as Protocol Labs and Ethereum Foundation both welcome comments from academic institutions and manufacturers regarding the VDF initiative.

Prior to the alliance, the Ethereum Foundation once denied investing $15 million of VDF’s development when it shifts to a PoS network. Yet, how much was spent to drive the VDF research project was not made public.