Arbitrum DAO Tornado Cash devs removed the proposal to support legal accounts

Arbitrum DAO rejected a proposal to fund Tornado Cash developers' legal defense costs.

The proposal sought to allocate approximately $1.3 million worth of ARB tokens from the community wallet to Roman Storm and Alexey Percev, founders of crypto mixer Tornado Cash. In addition, the budget may be used for public relations and advocacy efforts to promote privacy-preserving technologies.

Behind the initiative was anonymous representative DK, who presented the proposal on March 7, calling for “strong legal protection” for the developers. According to an Arbitrum spokesperson, the proposal was later withdrawn at the request of the author.

“I confirm that the forum was removed at the request of the author of the comment.”

The reasons for this change are unclear. Cointelegraph has contacted DK, but has yet to receive a response.

According to the indictment against Tornado Cash and its founders, the platform laundered more than $1 billion in illicit funds, including funds linked to the Lazarus Group. The United States has charged the developers with money laundering, embargo violations and running an unauthorized money laundering business.

Persev was arrested in the Netherlands in August 2022, Storm was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in August 2023. A third co-founder of Tornado Cash, Roman Semenov, was arrested.

Proponents of Tornado Cash argue that it only provides software to distribute decentralized money and is not involved in money transfers itself. The move on the platform is seen as a threat to developers of privacy-focused applications.

The builders faced other financial constraints. Crowdfunding platform GoFundMe canceled a fundraiser on Feb. 16 to collect legal fees for Storm and Perceive for violating their terms of service that “could expose GoFundMe, its employees, or its users to any damages or liability.”

Magazine: Tornado Cash 2.0: The Race to Build Safe and Legal Coin Mixers