On August 18, 36Kr relayed CCTV news that the international standard proposal led by China, *Overview and Analysis of Quantum Entropy Source Randomness Quality and Testing Methodology*, has been approved to enter the international standardization process. The keyword in the announcement is "testing methodology": before quantum random number generation can be commercialized, vendors must answer whether the output is truly random, how randomness quality is quantified, and whether the generation process is auditable.
One boundary is easy to miss: project approval means the proposal has entered the international standardization pipeline—it does not mean a unified, published, and enforceable global standard already exists. This article treats it only as a standardization direction, not as a finished certification regime.
Random Numbers Must Pass Three Gates
The first gate is statistical testing: are the bits sufficiently uniform, and does the sequence contain compressible structure? Many randomness projects treat this gate as everything; NIST's SP 800-90 series likewise separates random bit generators, entropy sources, and validation into distinct layers. Running a few frequency, run, or block-frequency tests cannot prove that the numbers were unpredictable *before* generation.
The second gate is device provenance. Quantum mechanics supplies unpredictability, but "using quantum devices" does not make the output trustworthy by default. Detector efficiency, environmental noise, laser drift, and post-processing/extraction algorithms can all hide defects. The more complex the source, the more the conversion chain from physical noise to final bits must be documented.
The third gate is traceability. Who generated this batch of numbers, when, and which steps were altered along the way? Can a third party re-verify? Publishing only a final string of 0/1s leaves auditors no view of where it came from.
NIST Has Already Turned the Third Gate into a Public Service
NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder publicly launched CURBy in 2025. It uses Bell tests on entangled photons and the Twine protocol to chain the generation process into a traceable, verifiable randomness service. In NIST's published data from the first 40 days, 7,434 of 7,454 attempts succeeded—a 99.7% success rate—with each successful output containing 512 bits. Quantum measurements run at roughly 250,000 per second, with raw results then rigorously processed.
The significance: randomness services are beginning to disclose source, output, and verification path together. Twine's role is not to slap a marketing label on random numbers, but to leave a checkable data fingerprint for every batch. In 2026, *Nature* reported an experimental device-independent randomness amplification on superconducting circuits, in which a defective random source was amplified via Bell tests to a level usable for cryptographic tasks. From the other direction, this shows that the core competitive advantage of quantum randomness lies in *provability*, not merely in looking uniform.
What the Standard Proposal Aims to Fix
If the China-led proposal eventually reaches consensus, its most direct effect would be unified testing criteria: vendors could no longer cherry-pick easy statistical tests, and buyers could verify "provenance, extraction, statistical quality, and post-processing traceability" separately. For cryptography, gaming, audit sampling, and scientific simulation, this matters more than simply doubling generation speed.
Restraint is still warranted. Public briefings do not yet include the working group's full document, scope, or release date; the proposal addresses "how to build a testing framework," not automatic trusted certification for all quantum random numbers. The next milestone is whether the standard text draws a clear boundary between classical pseudorandomness and quantum entropy sources, and whether device-independent proofs, statistical tests, and traceable records fit into one layered model.
Sources and verifiable links
1. 36Kr (relaying CCTV): China's progress in quantum technology international standardization https://36kr.com/newsflashes/3944223594528137 2. NIST: CURBy verifiable quantum randomness service https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/06/nist-and-partners-use-quantum-mechanics-make-factory-random-numbers 3. Nature: Experimental randomness amplification https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10521-8