ENS domain to be redirected to community-built interface
Tornado Cash, a privacy protocol that allows users to obfuscate the flow of crypto assets, has passed its first governance proposal since the US Treasury imposed sanctions on it in August.
The proposal points tornadocash.eth, the protocol’s Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain, to a new, community-built interface for Tornado Cash.
The previous interface depended on a hosted version of The Graph, a data protocol that dropped support for Tornado Cash in the wake of the sanctions, Micah Zoltu, an engineer, told The Defiant.
The proposal, which was unanimously approved on Dec. 13, also addressed other “weaknesses” in the interface, the engineer said.
A user who voted with almost 20,000 TORN tokens left a note on Alexey Pertsev, the programmer who contributed to Tornado Cash and is currently imprisoned in the Netherlands.
The biggest torn voter message
“[The vote] means Tornado is truly a community project and not just a make-believe community project like many others,” Zoltu said. “It shows that there are still people out there who genuinely care about making the world a better place and aren’t just in it for the money.”
In fact, OFAC’s sanctions, coupled with Pertsev’s arrest days later, sent the crypto industry into turmoil like few other events. Coinbase funded a lawsuit to get the sanctions lifted. Coin Center, a nonprofit crypto advocacy group, has also sued the U.S. Treasury Department.
Given Tornado Cash’s ambiguous legal status, it’s worth noting that at least some people were willing to vote on the proposal. “As a TORN holder, you certainly expose yourself to complex legal risks by participating,” tweeted Martin Köppelmann, co-founder of Gnosis, an Ethereum sidechain.
community control
The Tornado community’s ability to modify the project shows that the project can operate independently of its previous leadership. “[The passed proposal] hopefully also signals to the Dutch government that Alexey is not running things, so he should be released,” Zoltu said.
A crucial element of crypto protocols is the idea that, depending on the implementation, developers can provide open-source code over which they have no control. As an extension of this, developers can provide immutable code that cannot prevent users from interacting with it.
Going forward, the Tornado Cash community has indicated that they will continue with the project despite OFAC sanctions.
OFAC cited money laundering as the reason for imposing sanctions — Lazarus, the North Korea-sponsored hacking group, was linked to two hacks worth over $100 million last year, using Tornado Cash in both cases.
‘Unstoppable’
With a successful proposal in its rearview mirror, the project may test the resilience of blockchain-based protocols in a way none has done before.
Another proposal will follow the first, according to the newly created Tornado Cash Community Twitter account, which calls the protocol “unstoppable.”
In the face of unprecedented adversity, the Tornado DAO is breaking new ground in the crypto space.
“This is a tipping point for DAO resilience,” Koeppelmann tweeted before the proposal was adopted. “Can the TornadoDAO continue to operate in the face of sanctions and great legal uncertainty?”
Learn Crypto Trading, Yield Farms, Income strategies and more at CrytoAnswers
https://nov.link/cryptoanswers
Comments are closed.