# Why is not the origin libsodium library used when running a cardano-node?

**URL:** <https://forum.cardano.org/t/why-is-not-the-origin-libsodium-library-used-when-running-a-cardano-node/39465>\
**Category:** Operate a Stake Pool\
**Tags:** pool-operator\
**Created:** [30 August 2020 09:01 UTC](https://forum.cardano.org/t/why-is-not-the-origin-libsodium-library-used-when-running-a-cardano-node/39465 "2020-08-30T09:01:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![ada-samurai](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex023/user_avatar/forum.cardano.org/ada-samurai/32/30051_2.png) [@ada-samurai](https://forum.cardano.org/u/ada-samurai)\
**Post date:** [13 March 2021 14:48 UTC](https://forum.cardano.org/t/why-is-not-the-origin-libsodium-library-used-when-running-a-cardano-node/39465/5 "2021-03-13T14:48:34Z")

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Hi Elysium,

I share your concern because we’re still using that specific commit of the forked version as of now - per the official documentation. After searching a bit more about this, it looks like using this forked version is intentional. There was a conversation talking about merging this VRF feature support to upstream. However, it’s not happening because VRF specification is still a draft version.

References:

> <https://github.com/cardano-community/guild-operators/issues/421>
>
> Describe the bug
> The instructions and script to build the cardano-node and cardano-cli use the flag -external-libsodium-vrf. This flag is a convenience...

> <https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/issues/975>
>
> Algorand forked libsodium some time ago and implemented draft-irtf-cfrg-vrf-03, ( ECVRF-ED25519-SHA512-Elligator2 specifically) VRFs are becoming more commonplace and used nowadays...
> I was...

But definitely, I’d keep monitoring closely this because it will introduce complexity in the future.

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