Key Takeaways
- An ArbitrumDAO proposal to donate up to $1.28 million in crypto toward Tornado Cash developers for their legal defence has been deleted by its author.
- The proposal, posted on March 6, 2024, sought to provide a “robust legal defense” for Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev.
The Arbitrum DAO has recently retracted a proposal that aimed to allocate funds for the legal defense of Tornado Cash’s developers.
The proposal put forth by Arbitrum contributor Joseph Axisa sought to allocate nearly $1.3 million worth of ARB tokens from the community wallet in support of Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, the developers of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash. As per the Arbitrum spokesperson, the proposal was later removed upon the request of Axisa. The reasons for this withdrawal remain undisclosed.
The proposal, posted on March 6, 2024, sought to provide a “robust legal defense” for Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, the developers behind Tornado Cash. It aimed to support their rights to contribute to the deployment of permissionless open-source software.
This proposal comes in light of the legal challenges faced by Storm and Pertsev. Tornado Cash incurred sanctions from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) 18 months ago, allegedly for its involvement in aiding North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking group, Lazarus Group, in laundering billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.
Following the sanctions, Pertsev was arrested in Amsterdam by the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) for his alleged role in developing Tornado Cash.
Subsequently, in August 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Storm with multiple federal offenses, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Despite these accusations, both Storm and Pertsev maintain their innocence. Storm, who was released on a $2 million bond, is currently restricted to specific U.S. states pending his trial.
In a related development, crowdfunding platform GoFundMe recently removed a legal aid fundraiser for Tornado Cash co-founder and developer, citing a breach, and returned funds to donors.
