Cryptosat and Dfns Labs Launch Crypto Keys Into Low-Earth Orbit With Space Wallet

Cryptosat, a startup focused on launching satellite-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) into low-Earth orbit, has partnered with Dfns Labs, the research arm of web3 wallet infrastructure and security firm Dfns, to create and test the blockchain industry’s first “Space Wallet.” Designed to protect sensitive, high-value transactions, Space Wallet leverages an innovative threshold signature scheme with a satellite as a co-signer to prevent physical access-based attacks.

Threshold signature schemes allow private key shares to be distributed between multiple signers who must all provide their approval for a transaction to be confirmed. These protocols reduce the risk of a single point of failure, but they are not foolproof because there is still a small risk of attackers using sophisticated physical methods and/or administrative access to obtain the private key share stored by a signer. By hosting one of the signers on a Cryptosat satellite in space, Dfns’s Space Wallet puts such attacks beyond the reach of even the most motivated attackers. Cryptosat’s satellites are located in low-Earth orbit and therefore remain completely inaccessible even to the most well-funded, state-sponsored hackers. The company also employs advanced monitoring techniques to ensure that any attempt to get close to its satellites will be detected. Transactions are conducted using a novel threshold signature scheme called Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures (FROST), designed by cryptographers Chelsea Komlo and Ian Goldberg and implemented by Dfns Labs for resource-constrained satellites. Signatures can be generated over real Bitcoin transactions, compatible with the Bitcoin blockchain for now – additional blockchain support is on the roadmap. 

“We’re glad to support Dfns in the implementation of its threshold signature scheme with Cryptosat’s satellites as co-signers. It’s a great example of how we can leverage space as a perfect, physically-isolated environment for the level of security institutional wallet solutions require,” said Dr Yan Michalevsky, Cofounder of Cryptosat.

“Space Wallet offers an unprecedented level of security for threshold signatures,” noted Dr. Jonathan Katz, Chief Scientist of Dfns. “It also demonstrates that threshold signature schemes can be efficient enough to deploy in resource-constrained environments.” 

To further boost transaction security, Cryptosat ensures all transactions are fully auditable. If a transaction is spoofed by compromised ground-based infrastructure, the crypto-satellite’s immutable transaction audit ledger will log the incident, providing data that can be used to track the attacker responsible. Cryptosat’s satellites can also enforce additional security measures such as requiring confirmation if the transaction amount exceeds a certain value. 

About Cryptosat

Cryptosat builds and launches satellites that power blockchain and cryptographic protocols. Satellites are physically inaccessible and can serve as the most secure root-of-trust that guarantees the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive computations and data. Such tamper-proof satellites can serve numerous use-cases including transaction signing, trusted setups for cryptographic schemes, a randomness oracle, time-oracle (VDF) and more.

Founded by Stanford PhD alumni and second time founders Yonatan Winetraub and Yan Michalevsky, Cryptosat’s team have a background in aerospace engineering, applied security, and cryptography. In 2018, they published the SpaceTEE paper that first introduced the idea of using small satellites for protecting sensitive cryptographic operations and protocols. In May 2022, its first satellite, Crypto1, was launched into orbit, followed by its second, Crypto2, in January 2023. 

To learn more, visit Cryptosat’s website (https://cryptosat.io/), and subscribe to the Cryptosat Medium.

About Dfns

Dfns is a cybersecurity company providing wallet infrastructure for Web3. Dfns is the most secure wallet-as-a-service infra founded in 2020 in Paris. Dfns is Techstars-backed, SOC 2-certified and has raised over $20M since its creation. Dfns is an API-first KMS designed to provide app developers with secure, plug-and-play access to blockchains based on an decentralized, MPC-driven key management network with built-in recovery mechanisms, operated by error-and-attack-resilient tier 3+/4 data centers. Dfns is designed with focus on developer experience to maximize programmability, minimize high-touch implementations, and provide granular sets of permissions, controls and policies via secure API credentials (encrypted WebAuthn 2FA). Dfns supports 40+ blockchains and 1,000+ tokens. 

Our mission is to be one of the favorite building blocks in web3 and provide enablement technology for builders devoted to making the future of finance safe and delightful.

To learn more, visit Dfns’s website dfns.co. 

About Dfns Labs
Dfns Labs is the research team of Dfns. Members include Jonathan Katz (professor at the University of Maryland and one of the pioneers of secure computation and distributed cryptography), Denis Varlakov (protocol engineer and main contributor to the open-source MPC/TSS libraries of ZenGo X), Nikita Sorokovikov (MSc in cryptography and computer security from Tomsk University), and Chelsea Komlo (PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, co-author of FROST and core team member of the ZCash Foundation), along with advisor Nigel Smart (professor at the University of Leuven, cofounder of Unbound and one of the most prominent pioneers of applied MPC) and David Schwed (COO of Halborn, former CISO of Galaxy Digital, Head of Digital Assets at BNY Mellon and security leader at Citi and Merrill Lynch). 

The mission of Dfns Labs is to push the boundaries of decentralized and trustless key management systems by making multi-party computation and threshold-based protocols more scalable, robust, and accountable.

For more information, contact [email protected].