Arbitrum removes funding offer for Tornado Cash developer bill

Author: Ana Paula Pereira, CoinTelegraph; Compiled by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Arbitrum DAO has removed a proposal seeking to fund the legal defense costs of Tornado Cash developers.

The proposal seeks to distribute nearly $1.3 million worth of ARB tokens from community wallets to support Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, developers of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash. In addition, the budget can be used for public relations and advocacy efforts to promote privacy-preserving technologies.

The initiative is behind the pseudonymous representative DK, who submitted the proposal on March 7, calling for a "robust legal defense" for developers. The proposal was later removed at the request of the author, according to an Arbitrum spokesperson.

"I can confirm that the proposal was removed at the request of the proposal author."

The reason behind this change is unclear.

According to allegations against Tornado Cash and its founders, the platform laundered more than $1 billion in illicit funds, including funds linked to the hacking group Lazarus Group.  

Screenshot of the March 8 proposal. Source: Snapshot/Arbitrum DAO

Pertsev was arrested in the Netherlands in August 2022, and Storm was arrested by the FBI in August 2023. Roman Semenov, the third co-founder of Tornado Cash, remains at large.

Supporters of Tornado Cash believe that it is only software that provides decentralized currency transmission and does not itself directly participate in currency transmission. The platform's crackdown is also seen as a threat to developers building privacy-oriented apps.

Developers have faced other financial setbacks. Crowdfunding platform GoFundMe canceled a February 16 fundraiser specifically to collect legal fees from Storm and Pertsev, citing a violation of their terms of service that could "expose GoFundMe, its employees or users to any harm or liability of any kind." .