The Ethereum KZG ceremony, which aims to provide a cryptographic basis for Ethereum scaling, has received more than 83,000 randomness contributions from users around the world. Now it's receiving contributors from outer space.
Cryptosat, a blockchain-powered Earth-orbiting satellite, announced its entropy contribution from space on April 4 at 6AM UTC. Donations will be deployed from the Crypto2 satellite.
According to the Cryptosat announcement, the satellite orbits the Earth every 90 minutes and orbits 550 kilometers above the surface, making it difficult for outside participants to gain access during KZG contributions. Cryptosat co-founder Yan Michalevsky explained to Cointelegraph that the ceremony requires parties to be able to generate “encrypted parameters” that do not reveal so-called “toxic waste,” or intermediate computational artifacts that are discarded and inaccessible after generation.
Michalevsky went on to say that if leaked, this “toxic waste” could jeopardize the “integrity of the cryptographic schemes” on which the next generation of ethereum is based. Cryptosat has a verifiable randomness beacon service that will generate entropy for its contributions. Beacons from the service are signed by the satellite itself, which can be verified using a Crypto2 public key also generated in space.
"We do not access the internal structure of the satellite or the data generated as part of an intermediate step, which is kept private on the satellite, other than by using the API."
The entropy commitment of the Cryptostat space satellites can be viewed in real-time through a dashboard that monitors satellite trajectories and up-to-date status. Cryptosat was one of thousands involved in providing randomness to the KZG ceremony to enhance security, at the request of the Ethereum Foundation.
The satellite, called Crypto2, launched on Jan. 3 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. It is the successor to the first Crypto1 satellite launched in May. According to Cryptosat, the second satellite has 30 times the computing power of the first.
The company previously said the blockchain-powered satellite is part of an effort to make outer space a "new battleground in the quest for bulletproof cryptography." Ethereum Shanghai is upgraded to the mainnet, and Crypto2 will generate entropy for it, which is scheduled to take place on April 12.
