Dutch Cops Arrest Dev Behind Sanctioned Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash

DAOs are meant to be decentralized, and require a consensus vote from stakeholders to make any changes to the blockchain systems. However, DAO founders still have an outsized stake in the operation since they originally agreed to the rules and coding of the blockchain. Crypto mixers work by taking in multiple users’ crypto funds, mixing them around to help conceal the source of the digital currency before redistributing the funds back to the users, minus a cut.

Fans of Tornado Cash and other crypto mixers still argue for their use despite the massive amount of obvious illicit crypto laundering going on. Crypto proponents regularly evangelize the ideals of blockchain decentralization, claiming part of the purpose of crypto is to keep transactions out of the reach of government censors. Proponents point to examples such as trying to keep themselves and donors anonymous when offering financial support to Ukrainian troops fighting off the ongoing Russian invasion. Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of the Ethereum blockchain, said he’s used Tornado for this very purpose.

There is no official confirmation of which Tornado Cash developer has been detained, though FIOD further said they were not ruling out the possibility of multiple arrests. It’s unclear whether the arrest was related to writing the mixer’s original code, or other allegations of illegal conduct.

One of Tornado Cash’s developers Roman Semenov reported earlier this week his GitHub account was taken down. Though he complained “is writing an open source code illegal now,” the internet hosting service that is GitHub isn’t technically dealing with Tornado Cash’s sanctioned crypto wallets, so it’s more likely the code-hosting company is trying to avoid any connection to the heavily cited crypto mixer.

In a January interview with CoinDesk, Senenov, a co-founder of the mixer protocol, said “the team doesn’t have much control over the protocol” further claiming they mostly just publish code to GitHub, while all the important decisions are made by the Tornado community via the DAO.

Semenov did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s questions sent over Twitter. A spokesperson for GitHub told Gizmodo in an email that “Trade laws require GitHub to restrict users and customers identified as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) or other denied or blocked parties, or that may be using GitHub on behalf of blocked parties.”