Ethereum coin mixer Tornado Cash is back on software hosting website GitHub.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last month Blacklisted Tornado Cash that allows users to send and receive Ethereum anonymously. American citizens are now banned from interacting with the app, pooling transactions together and obscuring their provenance.
GitHub, a website where developers can share code, removed the tool’s code from its platform within hours of OFAC’s announcement.
However, Ethereum developers announced today that the tool’s original code has returned to the popular site.
Decryption We confirmed that Tornado Cash’s code was available for download, but GitHub did not explain why they reverted the code by the time this article was published.
Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon announced the news on Twitter. He previously said, “The code is speech, and free speech is a constitutional right worth protecting.”
The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted Tornado Cash last month because it was used to launder money by criminals, including the North Korean government-backed hacking group Lazarus Group.
According to the Fed, $7 billion worth of dirty digital cash has passed through the app since its creation in 2019. Said Of the $7.6 billion that went through the app, only $1.5 billion was reportedly due to illegal activity.
politician criticized Prohibition and Professor at Johns Hopkins University Posted A research-only “archive fork” of the Tornado Cash source code to GitHub.
Anonymous vandalism send ethereum to celebrities From your Tornado Cash wallet right after being blacklisted.the government then Said It does not prioritize enforcement against those who have received “unsolicited and nominal” amounts of tainted cryptocurrencies.
And this month, Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, funding Lawsuit against US Treasury for ban.
Tornado Cash is one of many.coin mixer, an app that anonymizes crypto transactions. Such tools are popular with those seeking privacy using their digital assets, for example, those sending funds to support causes in Ukraine.
Many cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are pseudonyms but not anonymous. No individual’s identity is recorded on the blockchain, but all transactions are recorded.
Tornado Cash will be used to trade on Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
