- The Crypto industry group petitions legislators to protect Defi developers.
- The group said that the fact of not doing it would endanger innovation.
- The founder of Tornado Cash, Roman Storm, was recently convicted of the crime whose group wishes to protect the developers.
Protect developers against being prosecuted as the founder of Tornado Cash Roman Storm or risks stifling cryptographic innovation in the United States.
This is essentially the message of a letter sent by a group of 115 companies, manufacturers, investors and defenders of the senatorial committee on banks and agriculture committee.
The letter urges legislators to introduce provisions in the Clarity Act to protect open-source promoters from being poorly classified or prosecuted as money transmission operators.
“It is essential that the legislation recognizes and preserves the historical protections offered to the development of open source software,” said the letter, signed by the DEFI education fund, a group of industry lobbies.
The other signatories included heavy strikers such as the venture capital giant A16z Crypto, Crypto Exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, Galaxy Digital and Ripple.
Storm verdict
The letter did not mention the storm or the tornado in cash by name.
Nevertheless, it occurs only a few weeks after the co -founder of the Privacy Protocol was found guilty of conspiracy to exploit a company of transmission of money without license – the same crime whose letter seeks to protect the developers.
The case has become a famous cause in the cryptography industry. Experts opposed the verdict. They said that it did not precisely reflect the functioning of the Tornado Cash and that many other cryptography protocols work.
“It should be clear of the clear language of the law that to transfer funds on behalf of the public, you must have funds from this person in your possession, your guard or your control,” said Amanda Tuminelli, executive director of the DEDUCE FUND, said DL News at the time.
Tuminelli said Tornado Cash had never had this kind of control and said the verdict endangered cryptographic innovation and risked leading developers to more accommodating jurisdictions.
This week, the 115 signatories of the letter apparently echoed this argument and warned that not protecting open source developers would endanger the goal of US President Donald Trump to transform the country into “the cryptographic capital of the planet”.
The letter warned the legislators that the next Clarity Act, a market structure bill which seeks to establish a clear regulatory framework for the crypto and to fill the existing regulatory gaps, could force developers in impracticable regulatory categories designed for the traditional financial world.
It comes then that the total share of open source software developers in the United States increased from 25% in 2021 to 18% in 2025, according to the Electric Capital developer report, a long-standing effort to quantify the activity of cryptographic developers.
They are not only defenders of the cryptography of the alarm increase.
“The inversion of the decline in blockchain development in the United States is at the heart of the objective of making America the world capital of cryptography,” said a July report of the president’s working group on digital assets.
Compliance path
Between 2021 and 2025, the American Commission for Securities and exchange under the president of the time, Gary Gensler, took what the industry deplored as a regulation thanks to the approach to apply the crypto.
The agency continued several major cryptography companies and issued Wells opinions to many others, without providing a regulatory framework for the asset class.
The dry of peopleler argued that cryptographic companies should come and talk to the regulator to ensure that they were in accordance with existing regulations.
However, many companies have declared that the SEC had prevented them from knowing which regulation applied to them, or if they were in violation.
This has changed under the Trump administration, which adopted a much more friendly approach to the crypto.
In July, Trump signed the law on engineering, a historic bill regulating stablecoins, in the law.
Now, the Clarity Act should soon give Crypto companies and developers a path to compliance.
But it is a situation with high issues. Although the bill can do a lot of good for industry, it also has the potential to turn around if legislators are not aware of the need for protection of cryptographic developers or to decide that they are not necessary.
The Crypto Industry Group, which consists of many members who have a considerable influence in Washington, clearly indicated its position.
“Protection of software developers is a firmly bipartite problem,” said the group’s letter. “Without such protections, we cannot support a bill on the structure of the market.”
Tim Craig is the DL News -based correspondent, based in Edinburgh. Handle with advice Tim@dlnews.com.
