CryptoSat’s first nanosatellite blasts off Wednesday on SpaceX rocket

cointelegraph.com:

If all goes to plan Wednesday’s SpaceX rocket launch in Florida will blast a “crypto-satellite” into low Earth orbit, paving the way for secure blockchain-related cryptography in space

Cryptosat, as the name hints, is the company which created “Crypto1”, a crypto-satellite module hitching a ride aboard a Falcon 9 rocket for SpaceX’s Transporter 5 mission. The blockchain satellite technology has already been trialled on the International Space Station.

“We're basically joining the Uber of spaceflight,” co-founder of Cryptosat Yonatan Winetraub told Cointelegraph, “Everybody goes into the same orbit and we're one of the passengers.”

“SpaceX launch a bunch of satellites, each one of them is doing something else,” he added, “It doesn't matter for our service, we are hoping to use our satellite to provide cryptographic services for our customers here on Earth which won’t interfere with the other satellites at all.”

The Crypto1 satellite is a coffee mug sized module created using over-the-counter parts. In space it will provide a physically unreachable and tamper-proof platform from which blockchain and ledger applications can be launched.

Co-founder Yan Michalevsky said this type of platform is the first off-world “root-of-trust” – a source which can always be trusted within a cryptographic system – which is “not dependent on other satellites by other companies” but actually provides the hardware in orbit, adding:

Michalevsky said one of the most exciting applications for the module is to set up zero knowledge proof protocols which he says are being used more often for uses like voting in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to make decisions without exposing individuals’ votes.

Other applications for the module include