ORAO Network

ORAO Network is a blockchain oracle infrastructure provider specializing in verifiable randomness and data availability services. Founded in 2020, its primary product is a Verifiable Random Function (VRF) deployed on Solana that has processed more than 60,000 requests on mainnet, supplying decentralized applications with cryptographically provable, manipulation-resistant randomness at low cost.

The Problem: Trustworthy Randomness On-Chain

Decentralized applications—particularly games, lotteries, NFT platforms, and financial protocols—require randomness that cannot be predicted or manipulated. On-chain entropy derived from block hashes or timestamps is easily biased by validators, while many first-generation oracle solutions depend on a single trusted node, creating a central point of failure. Smart contract logic alone cannot resolve this; the entropy source itself must be tamper-resistant.

ORAO addresses this by distributing randomness generation across a network of independent fulfillment nodes, ensuring no single party can influence the outcome.

Solana VRF: Architecture and Mechanism

ORAO's flagship product is its VRF v2 implementation on Solana, built on the EdDSA cryptographic primitive. The fulfillment process works as follows:

1. A client application submits a randomness request on-chain.
2. ORAO's fulfillment nodes independently monitor randomness accounts for incoming requests.
3. Each node generates a randomness value and submits it on-chain with a cryptographic signature.
4. The VRF program validates the signatures and combines (XORs) the inputs from authoritative nodes.
5. Once the network achieves Byzantine quorum consensus, the finalized randomness is stored on-chain and available for the requesting program to consume.

The classic VRF program address on Solana mainnet is VRFzZoJdhFWL8rkvu87LpKM3RbcVezpMEc6X5GVDr7y. A separate Callback VRF program (VRFCBePmGTpZ234BhbzNNzmyg39Rgdd6VgdfhHwKypU) supports more advanced integration patterns, including arbitrary writable accounts and Address Lookup Tables (ALT), which reduce transaction size constraints and allow developers to load more accounts into a single instruction.

Fulfillment typically takes between 4 and 20 seconds, with sub-second completion achievable. The fee is 0.001 SOL per request and has remained unchanged since mainnet deployment—well below the 0.007+ SOL charged by competing services. ORAO has positioned this cost stability as a meaningful long-term advantage for high-frequency use cases such as on-chain games.

Developer Integration

ORAO provides SDKs in both Rust and TypeScript/JavaScript. The Rust SDK is built on the Anchor framework and uses Cross Program Invocation (CPI) to integrate with other Solana programs. Integration requires the payer, network state, treasury, and request accounts as inputs to the RequestV2 instruction.

The JavaScript/TypeScript SDK is published to npm as @orao-network/solana-vrf and offers async/await functions for requesting and consuming randomness. ORAO maintains a "Russian Roulette" example program as a canonical integration reference, illustrating CPI patterns in a practical game context.

The library is released under the Apache 2.0 open-source license. Version 0.5.0 shipped in January 2025, version 0.6.0 in March 2025, and version 0.6.1 in May 2025, indicating ongoing maintenance and active development.

zkVRF: Zero-Knowledge Randomness for EVM Chains

Beyond Solana, ORAO has developed a zero-knowledge VRF (zkVRF) for EVM-compatible blockchains. This variant uses zk-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge), implemented via Zokrates, to generate randomness that can be cryptographically verified without exposing the underlying secrets. The addition of zero-knowledge proofs provides enhanced privacy for sensitive applications such as private lotteries or confidential auctions.

The zkVRF circuit uses Poseidon hashing and, following optimization, delivers results in approximately 10 seconds on Polygon—compared to over three minutes for competing implementations. A Phase 2 setup ceremony for the zk-SNARK circuit targeting Solana launched in September 2025, seeded using Ethereum block #23,440,000 as the random beacon.

Current zkVRF deployments are live on Polygon (Amoy Testnet) and Zircuit Testnet, with expansions planned for Arbitrum and Starknet.

Pricing Oracles

In addition to randomness, ORAO operates a pricing oracle service covering more than 37,000 markets and 42,000 cryptocurrencies. The system aggregates data from both centralized and decentralized exchanges and applies outlier detection across market pairs to filter manipulated or stale inputs. Users can configure slippage tolerance and latency parameters, and the system supports custom oracle feeds tailored to specific project requirements. The project describes this as a "data-agnostic" architecture capable of serving any on-chain or off-chain data need, not just price feeds.

Use Cases

ORAO's VRF and zkVRF services target a broad range of on-chain applications:

• Gaming: Randomized in-game events, loot drops, combat outcomes, and procedural content generation.
• NFTs: Provably fair trait assignment during mint and randomized distribution mechanisms.
• Lotteries and raffles: Transparent, auditable winner selection where biasing the draw is cryptographically impossible.
• Token airdrops: Random reward distribution among eligible participants.
• Auction systems: Randomized settlement mechanisms and tie-breaking logic.

History, Token, and Background

ORAO Network was founded in 2020 by Nikola Strahija (CEO), who previously supplied data infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies and co-founded a cryptocurrency indexing platform in 2017. Dr. Andrey Zienko, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from Moscow State University and has a background in business intelligence and AI, serves as CTO.

The project raised initial funding through a public sale on DAO Maker (Strategic Hour Offering) and an IEO on Gate.io in early 2021. Total supply of the ORAO token is 1 billion. A smart contract audit completed in April 2021 found no significant issues.

Shortly after the token generation event, ORAO encountered complications with a market maker (TokenMania, introduced through DaoMaker) that stole approximately $3 million across multiple projects, including $600,000 of ORAO's own liquidity. DaoMaker subsequently removed ORAO's Uniswap liquidity pool without notice and transferred 26 million tokens to Gate.io, prompting the team to consider a 1:1 token swap.

The team initially pursued a Polkadot parachain strategy for over a year before abandoning it in August 2022 due to inadequate developer infrastructure in the ecosystem. The project then pivoted fully to Solana, launching the network's first native VRF service in June 2023. A rewritten oracle infrastructure followed alongside a relaunched website. As of mid-2025, the Solana VRF remains the team's primary live product, with active development ongoing for both the callback VRF and the zkVRF for EVM chains.

Solana Fit

Solana's high throughput and low transaction fees make it a natural home for a randomness oracle that prioritizes speed and cost efficiency. ORAO's 4-to-20-second fulfillment window fits comfortably within Solana's fast block cadence, and the 0.001 SOL fee per request is economically viable for applications that require frequent randomness calls. The Anchor-based SDK integrates cleanly with the Solana developer ecosystem, and ALT support in the callback program reflects close alignment with how Solana programs compose at scale.

With its June 2023 launch, ORAO became one of the early native VRF providers on Solana, accumulating over 60,000 fulfilled mainnet requests while maintaining the same pricing since deployment.