Mining among the stars

Humans have always been fascinated with the universe. The stars shining bright in the night sky make us wonder about the world above our heads. This is where MineBest is focusing its latest efforts to mine cryptocurrencies.

Most satellites broadcast our favorite television shows, songs, and movies, support GPS devices, as well as beam phone calls and internet data. Other kinds of satellites can also monitor the weather or take photos of planets, black holes, and dark matter to help scientists better understand the solar system and the universe. MineBest can disrupt the cryptocurrency market by sending a satellite that will mine Bitcoin Vault – a cryptocurrency based on a three-private-key security structure – using only renewable solar energy.

Harnessing solar power

Solar power is considered to be the purest and the most eco-friendly type of energy available, as well as easy to harvest through the solar panels. Paul Jaffe, a spacecraft engineer at the US Naval Research Laboratory, says that “solar panels in space are illuminated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 99 percent of the year”. Because they are located closer to the sun, they collect up to 40 times the annual amount of reliable energy they would generate on the Earth. Jaffe also predicts that individual space-based solar panels would be able to produce from 250 megawatts to five gigawatts of energy. But since the sun is a continuous, renewable resource, the “total amount of power that could be produced is effectively infinite”, he adds. Because of this, scientists are calling it stellar energy.

At first glance, solar energy seems free. However, a well-respected Bitcoin advocate and tech entrepreneur Andreas M. Antonopoulos points out that although it’s free in terms of the electricity demand, the solar panels and mining equipment generate significant costs. What’s more; unlike on Earth, where the power generated from solar panels can be used as a source of heat or sold to the government, in space, there’s no other use for this energy except for mining cryptocurrency. But this technology has obvious upside. On earth the solar radiation received cannot exceed 2,000 watts per square meter due to the engineering limitations. In space, it doesn’t have to go through our atmosphere, hence it’s not obscured along the way and can be used more efficiently.

Cosmic efficiency

The basic idea behind the technology is pretty simple. The sun emits photons – packets of light and heat – at all wavelengths. Here on Earth, a regular solar panel absorbs those photons and converts them into electrons of direct-current electricity. Then, to power an electronic device plugged into a wall outlet, the direct current is transformed into an alternating current.

When it comes to solar panels in space, the problem is that there’s no right way to send all that accumulated energy back to Earth. MineBest wants to change it by creating a satellite-based mining machine that can mine Bitcoin Vault while in orbit and transfer it back to Earth using solar power. And all of this while rotating around the blue planet.

The new space race

Even though mining cryptocurrency in space is a fairly new idea, some companies already aimed for the stars. In 2018, Miner One launched a rig using a hydrogen balloon and successfully performed mining activity at an altitude of more than 35,000 meters (almost 22 miles). This bold mission lasted 2.5 hours and achieved a hashrate of 330 MH/s.

MineBest has an even more ambitious plan in mind. The idea is to send a satellite equipped with a space miner – a cryptocurrency mining machine able to produce 1 TH of power using only free solar energy. It will also carry two cameras streaming both the view of Earth and the image of the satellite itself. This innovative, state-of-the-art equipment will continuously mine Bitcoin Vault with zero impact on the environment.

But being eco-friendly is not the only benefit of mining cryptocurrency in space. It is also highly secure. This was proven thanks to SpaceChain Foundation, which installed blockchain hardware embedded with the multi-signature wallet technology on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020. The installation, conducted by a marine biologist and a participant of the first all-women space walk Jessica Meir, adds two new factors to the already existing blockchain solutions – the remoteness and security of low-Earth orbit infrastructure. From now on, to send any amount of cryptocurrency between Earth and ISS, someone has to confirm the transaction on both ends, and it is impossible to gain unauthorized access to a space station.

This inventive endeavor told us that possibilities for collaboration in space using decentralized technology are endless. There is a whole world out there yet to be discovered, and MineBest is ready to take the first step towards this new market and make the most of it.