The Ethereum KZG ceremony, which intends to provide a cryptographic foundation for scaling Ethereum, has received blockchain-powered satellite Cryptosat a contribution from outer space.
At 6 a.m. UTC on April 4, Cryptosat, a blockchain-powered satellite circling Earth, declared its contribution of entropy from space. The contribution will be transmitted using the Crypto2 satellite.
According to Cryptosat’s statement, the satellite orbits the Earth every 90 minutes at 550 kilometers above the surface, making it difficult for outside actors to get access during the KZG contribution.
Cryptosat co-founder Yan Michalevsky stated that the ceremony requires parties who can generate “cryptographic parameters” without leaking “toxic waste,” or intermediary computation artifacts that are deleted and inaccessible after generation.
If spilled, this “toxic waste” might jeopardize “the integrity of the cryptographic scheme” upon which the next edition of Ethereum is based, according to Michalevsky.
“This is why generating those parameters in a completely physically isolated environment from which data cannot be extracted has a lot of merit.”
The Verifiable Random Beacon service provided by Cryptosat will produce entropy for its contribution. This service’s beacons are signed by the satellite itself and may be confirmed using the in-space-generated Crypto2 public key.
“Apart from using the API to it, we don’t access the internals of the satellite or the data that is generated as part of the intermediate steps, and is kept secret on the satellite.”
A dashboard displaying the satellite’s flight and current condition will provide real-time access to the satellite’s entropy contribution.
Cryptosat is among the thousands of participants supplying randomness for the KZG ceremony, as required by the Ethereum Foundation to improve security.
The Crypto2 satellite was launched into space on the SpaceX Falcon 9 on January 3. It was the successor to the initial Crypto1 satellite launch in May. The second satellite has 30 times the computational capability of the first, according to Cryptosat.
Previously, the corporation stated that blockchain-powered satellites are part of an endeavor to transform outer space into a “new battlefield in the pursuit of impregnable cryptography.”
The Ethereum Shanghai mainnet upgrade, for which Crypto2 will create entropy, is slated for April 12.
