The company aims to harden cryptographic applications by providing tamper-resistant trusted execution environments in space.

Trusted setups are vital to many areas of cryptography. A guaranteed absence of physical security vulnerabilities would improve the integrity of sensitive computations, which could benefit much of today's blockchain industry and beyond.

Protocol Labs backs Cryptosat in $3 million raise
Cryptosat aims to launch multiple low-orbit satellites that will beam down building blocks for cryptographic systems — like securely generated random numbers — to applications back on Earth. This completely eradicates the physical attack vector, at least until technology improves to the point that some entity can scoop satellites out of space.

Cryptosat's $3 million seed raise comes from some of the industry's heavyweights. Joining open-source research and development specialists Protocol Labs are Inflection, GoAhead Ventures, DoraHacks and the founders of Phala Network.

With help from SpaceX, Cryptosat launched its first satellite, Crypto1, into orbit this May. The startup has also conducted experiments on the International Space Station. With its additional funding, Cryptosat's self-described "root of trust" can expand, hastening the development of novel cryptographic concepts like ZK-SNARKs.

As cited in a press release detailing the seed raise, Yan Michalevsky, Cryptosat's cofounder, stated:

"Cryptosat provides unprecedented integrity, confidentiality and authenticity guarantees for the most sensitive cryptographic operations by leveraging an environment that provides ultimate physical security: space."