Here’s how Crypto Twitter is reacting to attacks on Tornado Cash

Last week, the US watchdog OFAC put the addresses of Tornado Cash, the world’s most popular service for murky transactions, on the sanctions list. Dutch police arrested core developer Alexey Pertsev with more crackdowns yet to come. The global crypto community is outraged by the attack and is debating its influence on the future of blockchain and Web3.

Crypto Twitter mocks the absurdity of another anti-crypto witch hunt

By and large, prominent crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, analysts, researchers and traders are shocked by the absurdity of attacks on Tornado Cash. Many of them – including Stefan George, co-founder and CTO of Gnosis – recall the US attempt to ban one of the key elements of PGP encryption. In the 1990s, US Customs opened a criminal investigation into Phil Zimmermann, when part of his code was considered ammunition subject to arms export controls.

1/ Today’s arrest of a developer for writing privacy-preserving software reminds me of the US government’s criminal investigation into PGP developer Zimmermann for “ammunition export without a license”. Cryptosystems using keys >40 bits were considered ammunition.

— Stefan George (@StefanDGeorge) 12 August 2022

DeFi researcher, lawyer and educator Chris Blec compared the sanctions against Tornado Cash to punishing arms manufacturers for their clients’ illegal activity:

Explain to me how Tornado developers being arrested for writing code that can be used by criminals does not result in weapons manufacturers being arrested for making weapons that can be used by criminals.

— Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) 12 August 2022

Also, the crypto community is angry about the fact that every individual who somehow interacted with Tornado Cash can also be considered “sanctioned”:

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Due to market conditions, 0.1 ETH is now 30 years in prison

— financial privacy is a human right (@functi0nZer0) 13 August 2022

Law abiding DeFis are under fire

Some services that have already “imposed” sanctions against Tornado Cash are being criticized by privacy advocates. At press time, Tornado Cash clients are banned from using the Aave Finance (AAVE) and dYdX (DYDX) interfaces; the accounts of the project and its developers have been suspended by GitHub, while Tornado Cash’s main Discord server is also down.

Also, Circle has frozen some USDC coins somehow associated with Tornado Cash; the calls to Tornado Cash are censored by the Alchemy and Infura node providers and the domain is shut down by the decentralized hosting service Limo.

Crypto investor Ryan Sean Adams slammed the services that block Tornado Cash addresses and advised them to “grow some backbone”:

Time for DeFi to get some backbone and fight back instead of just blocking ETH addresses.

Unelected bureaucrats blacklisting citizens without reason or due process is unconstitutional, illegal and incompatible with any free society.

If we don’t stop it here, it will only get worse.

— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth 🦇🔊 (@RyanSAdams) 13 August 2022

However, some crypto experts recommend only using the DeFi codebase with custom interfaces since all major Ethereum-centric protocols are open source:

if your favorite platform blocks you don’t 😢….this is front end only.

the protocol is still there:

— odin-free.eth ✨🐺 (@odin_free) 13 August 2022

Resistance in Web3: Enthusiasts spread the word about Tornado Cash

To inject new life into “Munitions” t-shirts popularized by Bitcoin (BTC) veteran Adam Back, enthusiasts have already produced “Tornado Cash” garments with printed versions of the codebase.

FRESH DROP: “Tornado Sanction” Tee 🌪

THIS SHIRT IS SANCTIONED BY THE US TREASURY.

Don’t pass by, don’t be self-righteous and don’t be in control of your own privacy.

Designed by @META_DREAMER and @ameensol

Policeman: pic.twitter.com/twHMeCNGSk

— MetaFactory (@TheMetaFactory) 9 August 2022

Another enthusiast turned the Tornado Cash codebase into a piece of digital art:

People have started making resistance art to protest the arrest of a Tornado Cash developer. This is a copy of the Tornado Cash smart contract, encoded as art. pic.twitter.com/DZMD9bkDrw

— Lucy Harley-McKeown 📖 (@LHM1) 12 August 2022

Experienced blockchain security researcher and ConsenSys Diligence co-founder Gonçalo Sá launched a Tornado Cash factory that partially reimburses the distribution costs of every Web3 enthusiast who deploys the latest version of their codebase:

1/n 🧵

I just created a Tornado Cash factory that distributes a dummy version of the latest version of their main contracts and PARTIALLY REFUNDS you for the distribution costs (currently it refunds you in a constant amount of 0.3 ETH, this is hardcoded). pic.twitter.com/6YQEaObXDT

— Gonçalo, Le Brute (@GNSPS) 12 August 2022

Last but not least, more conservative Tornado Cash advocates are trying to find a lawyer for the team to create a defensive strategy.