Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin supports the developer team of Tornado Cash with his 30 ETH donation. You may have read that the Tornado Cash dev team is battling a legal defense. What does Buterin’s involvement in it mean? Does the donation by Buterin help the dev team in a greater way? Why is the dev team in controversy now? Let us read all about that.
Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm, the developers of Tornado Cash the crypto mixer, are fighting a legal defense and the donation of Vitalik Buterin which is approximately equivalent to 113K US dollars has become the talk of their own. The reports suggest that this donation is of a huge impact and support to the developers.
It is to be noted that currently, Buterin is working to develop a compliant version. He is developing a crypto mixer, an Ethereum-based one that would be functioning in adherence to the current anti-money laundering policies out there.
What Are The Charges Faced By The Tornado Cash Developers?
Alexey Pertsev was recently sentenced to serve above five years in prison. The ruling was made by a Dutch court. It states that the reason for his prison sentence is his involvement in a money laundering case worth 2.2 billion US dollars. The other developer Roman Storm is also facing similar allegations and his trial is dated to take place in the coming September in a US court.
Apparently, the developers are facing an issue because their crypto mixer platform was used in a wrongful way by third parties. Tornado Cash is an open-source and non-custodial cryptocurrency tumbler that is fully decentralized.
It runs on the Ethereum blockchain on virtual machine-compatible networks. They are facing the law because the allegations state that they did not implement the required policies on their website that would prevent any conduct of money laundering on these websites.
What Is The Emotion Of The Crypto Community Towards This?
The various crypto circles do support the Tornado Cash developers and their aim is to ensure privacy and anonymity in blockchain transactions. However, the current allegations and trials that they are facing are raising fear that the devs may end up in jail.
Some of the top-profile crypto investors and firms have announced their support for the Tornado Cash devs. The Blockchain Association and Coinbase along with other trade associations have already submitted their amicus briefs. These are to support the Roman Storm.
Many other exchanges are firms that have already made or are planning to make huge donations to support the devs in their legal apple. Matter Labs has made a donation of 100,000 US dollars to the legal defense fund.
The latest news suggests that Uniswap DAO was considering a donation worth 1.5 million. It is reported that this donation would be made in UNI tokens. The recent data suggest that the legal defense fund has been able to raise around 2.2 million US dollars in donations, so far.
What Are The Impacts Of The Tornado Cash devs’ Conviction And Trial?
If the Tornado Cash devs do not win their legal battle, it may hinder the future growth of the smart contracts used in the anonymizing platforms. While ordering a sentence for Pertsev the Dutch court mentioned that he was to be found guilty for all the actions people make using the technology of Tornado Cash.
This may badly affect the future of technology. It is to be noted that we are not yet further in the development of the smart contracts in the anonymizing platforms. Therefore, if Tornado Cash devs do not win their legal battle. It can only be seen as a backlash against the technology.
What Is Vitalik Buterin Up To?
Buterin has previously supported privacy tools in crypto and emphasizes the need for such tools in the crypto landscape. He is forming collaborations with other developers in the field to enhance the development of new crypto mixers. The crypto mixer would be called Privacy Pools and he has already collaborated with Ameen Soleimani.
Privacy Pools is supposed to let the users remain anonymous at the same time it would not cover criminals for conducting any crypto-related activities.
