In a standard 2-party commit-reveal, one party always learns the result first. (Mostly servers in current setups).
By adding a Randomness Beacon (Drand) as a third entropy source, we solve two things: No Last-Look: Neither the player nor the server knows the outcome until a specific future timestamp (the Drand round). Forced Resolution: Since the Drand signature is public, once that round passes, the result is 'locked' by math. The server can't hold the result hostage because anyone can pull the Drand signature and verify the result themselves.
I looked at VDFs and custom MPCs, but they felt like overkill for a dice roll. Drand is basically a "pre-computed" MPC that anyone can verify with a simple curl. It hits that pragmatic sweet spot for a trustless audit without the "math homework" for the user...
It turns the server from a "Judge" into a "Timestamped Vault" that can't hold the outcome hostage if it's unfavourable, giving the player a winning ticket they can verify independently.
Are you sure? The protocol described in Chuck Norris book Applied Cryptography seems to work fine without a randomness beacon. Once you get the commitments from all parties they reveal the nonces and everyone verifies they match the commitments and extracts the same random bits.