Tornado Cash
Shut DownInfrastructure · $TORN · born 2019 · ✝ 2022
The privacy mixer the US Treasury added to its sanctions list.
Tornado Cash was an Ethereum privacy mixer using zero-knowledge proofs to break the on-chain link between sender and receiver. In August 2022 OFAC sanctioned its smart contracts — a first for autonomous code — after billions, including Lazarus loot, flowed through it.
- Peak
- ~$7B+ lifetime volume
- Cause
- Shut Down
- Year of death
- 2022
☠️ Cause of death
OFAC sanctions made interacting with the contracts a legal risk; front ends, repos, and relayers were pulled, and developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm faced criminal charges. A US court later ruled immutable contracts couldn't be sanctioned, but the project never recovered as a venture.
📓 Lessons left behind
- —Permissionless privacy tools attract both dissidents and launderers.
- —Sanctioning code raised unsettled questions about open-source liability.
- —Neutral infrastructure can still be regulated into the cold.
🌱 The idea that survived
Compliant privacy
The fight pushed research into selective-disclosure and proof-of-innocence designs that offer privacy without enabling sanctioned flows.