The Ethereum Foundation has promised $ 500,000 to support the legal defense of the co-founder of Tornado Cash Roman Storm, which faces federal accusations in the United States.
In addition to the direct donation, the Foundation said that it will correspond to $ 750,000 in community contributions.
The Ethereum Foundation intervenes to support Roman Storm while Tornado Cash Trial is looming
Storm is expected to be tried on July 14, 2025 at the Manhattan Federal Court. He is accused of a conspiracy in order to operate a silver issuer without license, a conspiracy in order to whiten money and a conspiracy in order to violate American sanctions.
The Ethereum Foundation has described its donation as a stand for privacy and open source development.
“Confidentiality is normal, and code writing is not a crime,” he wrote in a statement published Friday on X.
Storm was charged in August 2023 for its role in the construction and maintenance of Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer accused of facilitating the whitening of more than a billion dollars in illicit funds.
The service would have allowed users to obscure the source and destination for transactions, an activity which, according to the American authorities, was operated by pirates and criminal networks to move stolen assets.
The Storm trial occurs while prosecutors and regulators increase the examination of crypto tools linked to privacy and decentralization. His defense argued that the case threatens the foundation of decentralized finances (DEFI) by criminalizing open source development.
“In 31 days, I am being tried,” said Storm in an article on Friday on X. “The Doj wants to bury Defi, saying that I should have checked it, added Kyc, I never built it. Sdny tries to crush me, blocking each expert witness. If I lose, Defi puts me.”
Its co -founder, Roman Semenov, has also been charged in the case but is generally, apparently in Russia.
A third promoter, Alexey Pertsev, was found guilty of money laundering by a Dutch court in May and sentenced to more than five years in prison. He is currently under electronic surveillance as his call is progressing.
The tornado species was sanctioned by the US Treasury Bureau for Foreign Active Control (OFAC) in 2022. The agency said the tool had facilitated more than $ 7 billion in illicit transactions since 2019 and had not adopted guarantees against criminal use.
The Storm legal team previously sought to reject the accusations, arguing that the OFAC has exceeded its authority by sanctioning the intelligent contracts of the mixer.
This motion follows a separate decision in a related case which questions the scope of the agency on the decentralized code.
As the Essay approaches, the contribution of the Ethereum Foundation marks one of the most prominent shows to date for the storm and raises broader questions about the extent to which developers should be held responsible for the code without authorization.
Vitalik Buterin donates $ 170,000 to support Tornado cash developers at the start of this year
The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buerin, donated 50 ETH, worth around $ 170,000 in January 2025, to support the legal defense of Tornado Roman Tornado and Alexey Pertsev Tornado Defensers.
@Vitalikbutin advanced a substantial donation to support the legal defense of tornado cash developers.#Buterin #Ethhttps://t.co/b6gbh3kxzw
– cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) January 1, 2025
The contribution has been confirmed by the juicebox project “Free Pertsev and Storm”, which has hitherto collected more than $ 650,000 via Justicedao, a decentralized fund supported by the cryptographic community.
Buterin’s support follows the assembly of legal pressure on developers. In May, the United States Ministry of Justice confirmed that it would make federal accusations against Storm, including allegations of money laundering and sanctions.
– cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) May 16, 2025
The DoJ continues federal accusations against Roman Storm, co -founder of Tornado Cash, after abandoning the accusation of transmission of money without license.The costs relating to the operation of a silver transmission company without license were then abandoned. The legal campaign against Storm has also triggered a backlash through cryptographic space.
In April, the DEFI education fund urged the Trump administration to intervene, qualifying the Actions of the DOJ as “lawless laws” of open source software developers.
The petition has since grown, with signatures of key figures from the industry, including Fred Ehrsam from Coinbase, Matt Huang de Paradigm and the basic developer Ethereum Tim Beiko.
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