Investors like Protocol Labs have contributed $3 million to the seed investment of Cryptosat. The business wants to launch satellites that can send computed data to Earth in a secure manner. The crypto industry has previously experimented with leveraging space for security.
Using Cryptosat to Fortify Cryptography
Many cryptographic operations are challenging to carry out. For instance, cryptography frequently employs extremely big numbers, but it can be challenging to program a computer to produce random numbers. Key creation becomes arduous as a result, and security flaws result. Your security may be at risk if a piece of hardware in charge of producing your random number is compromised.
There are many instances of systems that might be enhanced if a trustworthy source existed, from Verifiable Delay Functions to ZK-SNARKs. That dependable source of truth, according to Cryptosat's "oracles of the sky," will be them.
The business just secured $3 million, according to a news release, to continue developing its satellites, the first of which was launched in May 2022. With the assistance of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Crypto1 successfully completed the trek from Earth.
Yan Michalevsky of the Anjuna enterprise security company and Yonatan Winetraub of SpaceIL founded Cryptosat. In 2017, the two researchers published a study on the potential for satellites to transmit secret cryptographic procedures. Since then, they have improved the concept.
Yan Michalevsky made the following statement regarding the goal of Cryptosat:
"Cryptosat provides unprecedented integrity, confidentiality and authenticity guarantees for the most sensitive cryptographic operations by leveraging an environment that provides ultimate physical security: space."
With Protocol Labs, one of its sponsors, Cryptosat is already developing Verifiable Delay Functions hosted in space. A relationship with the EVM-compatible Velas blockchain is focused on developing a Random Beacon in the meantime. The two want to develop a robust random number generator that can be used by numerous apps.
Continued Competition in the Cryptosphere
Crypto sector veterans might recall another business that sought to maximize security from space. The venerable blockchain development company Blockstream has previously sent a number of satellites into orbit.
No matter where a potential user is located in the world, the Blockstream satellite was designed to offer free access to the Bitcoin network starting in August 2017. Blockstream made the same discovery as Cryptosat that it is currently impossible to remove satellites from their orbit. Therefore, the goal was to increase Bitcoin's use as well as its resistance to censorship at the state level.
The co-founder of Blockstream, Adam Back, added privacy to the advantages in 2022 at Bitcoin Amsterdam:
"You can receive the data anonymously because it's broadcast, and basically nobody can tell you're receiving it. So, that's good for privacy."
Before announcing the updated Blockstream Satellite in 2020, Blockstream has launched three additional satellites since 2017. The updated version added more functionality and made it possible to sync a complete Bitcoin node without an internet connection.
