Trust is a fundamental component of blockchain protocols and their ability to ensure highly secure and privacy-enabled setups that can reduce the presence of intermediaries in transactions. By building a trusted environment that assures security and transactional integrity, parties can transact in a peer-to-peer format and dependably receive accurate output. Yet, introducing trusted environments depends on setting up a protocol that doesn’t invite interference by nefarious parties.
To enhance protocol security, decentralization, and scalability, satellite developer and operator Cryptosat teamed up with incentive platform and hackathon organizer DoraHacks to experiment with trusted setups in space. Performed in conjunction with Nanoracks Europe, which has been offering commercial space services since 2009, the first-of-its-kind experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) demonstrated that trusted setups could be generated in space. In this particular case, space’s remoteness assures greater security and decentralization relative to comparable earth-based services.
In this case, the experiment produced a Common Reference String (CSR), powering a Zero-Knowledge proof responsible for managing user privacy and protecting the Dora Grant DAO’s (decentralized autonomous organization) voting system. The general idea behind a Zero-Knowledge proof is that one party doesn’t need to share private information with a second party to prove that a specific output is valid. Instead, this proof is provided cryptographically.
The trusted setup is the phase that generates the Common Reference String. A trusted setup is required to arrive at the validation stage, whereby at least two parties set the standards the Zero-Knowledge proof depends upon to function. Without the trusted setup, a malicious user could upload their own CSR to a protocol, thereby invalidating a system’s trust.
In addition to securing the Dora Grant DAO’s voting mechanism…
