In crypto, owning the private key of a wallet makes you the unquestionable controller of the assets it contains. This is great for sovereignty, but it means that if the private key is compromised, you have no recourse. But what if the private key is in space? This is the premise of Cryptosat, a company that launched several satellites to date, leveraging the vastly cheaper delivery costs enabled by SpaceX’s reusable rockets.
Cryptosat launched two satellites so far, Crypto1 and Crypto2. These are small, coffee mug-sized boxes that contain key machinery for Trusted Execution, enabling secure cryptographic operations.
Trusted Execution Environments, or TEEs, are small enclaves available in most modern Intel processors that enable encrypted computation. Nobody can extract data from them via software, and nobody can tamper with what’s happening inside of a TEE. At the same time, the results of these computations can be easily verified externally.
These features should make TEEs perfect for blockchain applications, but unfortunately, their security guarantees are hardware-based. This means that a number of potential physical attacks could compromise their integrity, which isn’t suitable for blockchain applications. With Cryptosat, the idea is to bring these TEEs to orbit, making it nigh impossible to compromise. We sat…
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