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A spokesperson from Arbitrum DAO has confirmed that the proposal to fund Tornado Cash developers’ legal defense has been deleted at the author’s request.
The proposal was asking to fund the legal defense costs of Tornado Cash’s developers. It aimed to allocate ARB tokens worth $1.28 Million approximately. The tokens would be taken from the community wallet supporting the developers of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash, Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev.
Moreover, this budget can be utilized for public relations and advocacy efforts; it will promote privacy-preserving technologies.
Details of the Proposal
On March 7, a pseudonymous delegate DK submitted the proposal and is probably the mastermind behind the initiative. It is called a robust legal defense for developers. After which the proposal was removed at the request of an author, said a spokesperson from Arbitrum.
He said, “I can confirm that the forum was removed at the request of the author of the proposal.”
However, the reasons for this modification are not yet disclosed. The media agencies tried reaching out to DK, but none of them got a response.
The proposal was published on Wednesday, March 6, setting forth a plan to pledge between 200,000 and 600,000 ARB tokens to a legal defense fund for Storm and Pertsev.
They are facing criminal charges for writing software for Tornado Cash, a smart contract protocol that increases the difficulty of tracking transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
However, on Friday, March 8, the post was no longer available on Arbitrum’s discourse forum. The exact timing of the removal of the post remains unknown, as it went unnoticed by the community of Arbitrum on X.
As per the initial proposal, the funds were to be sent to WeWantJusticeDAO’s crowdfunding campaign. It coordinates coverage of Storm and Pertsev’s monthly legal expenses of $100,000, mentioned on the group’s fundraising webpage. The donated tokens were to be held on a crypto-focused fundraising platform, Juicebox, as per the proposal.
Allegations against Tornado Cash
The platform is believed to have laundered over $1 Billion in illicit funds, as per the allegations. The claims include money linked to the malicious organization Lazarus Group.
The government of the USA has charged the developers with money laundering, sanctions violations, and also for running an unlicensed money transfer business.
The supporters of Tornado Cash argue that it just provides software for decentralized money transmission. It does not directly engage in money transmission itself. The crackdown or failure of the platform represents a threat to privacy-oriented applications for its developers.
Moreover, the developers have also faced other financial challenges and setbacks.
Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev
Alexey Pertsev was arrested in August 2022 in the Netherlands, whereas Storm was arrested in August 2023. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested the suspects. Roman Semenov is the only co-founder remaining on the board of Tornado Cash.
On February 16, GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform, canceled a fundraiser specially dedicated to collecting legal fees for Storm and Pertsev. They cited the reason for cancellation as a breach of their terms of service that could expose GoFundMe, its employees and its users to any kind of vulnerability, harm or liability.
Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.
