whatisweb3

The US sanctioning Tornado Cash and the resulting repercussions is deeply concerning. Whether or not you like crypto, you should not be supporting this if you are a researcher, academic, technologist, cryptographer, or privacy advocate. The code for Tornado Cash is a series of cryptographic and mathematical functions that can be repurposed for a variety of applications unrelated to privatizing user wallets. The protocol itself is designed for one reason: to give users privacy through end to end and zero knowledge cryptography.

Allowing it to remain open source and accessible as a tool for blockchain privacy and codebase for cryptographic research is a net benefit for the entire world.

A comparison would be that US decides to sanction the open Matrix protocol along with any user, developer, source host, or sponsor that has ever contributed to it in the past - because it can facilitate end-to-end encrypted terrorist communication.

> No matter how hard you try, transactions and trails can be reconstructed.

Except the opposite is true. Tornado cash protocol is working well enough in its privacy features that the US government feels the need to threaten any business touching it directly or indirectly.

Imagine you made this argument for E2EE. The US government can sanction and ban the use of Matrix and all other E2EE chat protocols making it very difficult for users to engage with them - but this does not mean the cryptographic protocols are failing to provide privacy and security.

Tor is primarily associated with crime. Doesn’t mean we should throw away privacy tools and submit to surveillance state.

Ethereum has hard forked once with the DAO. It needs a significant divergent of opinion - like 10% of all miners splitting off into their own network, client tooling, platforms, and ecosystem.

It is not something that can be done on a whim and can’t happen every time the US adds a new address to their sanctions list.

lol, the goalposts have shifted from “nobody uses it for this” to “we can’t know if people use it for this.”

Imagine applying this logic to E2EE chat: we can’t know if anybody is using it for legitimate reasons, because we can’t see their messages.

Besides, you can check the chain yourself - if Vitalik is truthful, you should see at least that some tornado linked funds have been donated to Ukraine after the point he placed them in the protocol.

People are using the system for these reasons. Vitalik himself has gone on record saying he has used Tornado Cash to donate large sums of money anonymously to Ukraine.

E2EE is all-or-nothing. You don't see Matrix adding a special case in the encryption technique to notify authorities if the phrase "nuclear" or "minor" appears in a message. The intent of E2EE and Tornado Cash is exactly the same: privacy. The line you draw here is arbitrary based on your own subjective view of the space.

Sure you are, in two ways:

1. You are using and supporting the same protocol that they are also using. As the application grows and improves because more people are using and supporting it, the criminals are also being helped.

2. You are creating cover. The more people that use Tor and Matrix, the more secure it becomes for all users within the network.

If you and a criminal are both using the same Matrix server, neither you nor the host would know. Your plain text messages are going into the protocol, getting mixed and encrypted, and then spit out the other end.

E2EE obscures everything, that is why it is called end-to-end. If Alice and Bob and John and Piper are all communicating with pseudonymous names in a Matrix room, you do not know who is talking to who or what they are talking about.

Then it would be malicious?

E2EE and onion routing protocols use similar cryptography to "mix" and "obscure" inputs and outputs. It is very much the same approach, just that we don't call it "message laundering" because we as society have come to appreciate private communication.

I would tell you to just look at the Tornado Cash code yourself to verify this, but alas...

What you are looking for is not an open source license.

It is known that criminals use E2EE, ergo anybody using this technology is knowingly helping a criminal. what a bad take.

Tornado cash is not run by terrorists. The express purpose of the tool is privacy, and that is what it is being used for.

The express purpose of an end to end encrypted chat protocol is to provide privacy. If users of it engage in criminal behavior that does not mean the express purpose of the protocol is also criminal.

It is a tool for privacy, full stop. Criminals can use this for criminal activity, law abiding citizens can use this for law abiding activity. Also see end-to-end encrypted chat apps, VPNs, onion routing and other privacy tools that are widely used by criminals.

also consider applications that might be illegal but often considered moral like paying for an abortion with tornado cash ETH in a state where abortion is illegal, or donating to a state that your current regime is at war with.

Tornado Cash is a protocol. It targets EVM, and has been deployed on Ethereum, Optimism, Avalanche, Polygon and other networks. It happens to be open source, the code was mirrored on GitHub for research and contributions.

They are setting a precedent that any forks or similar implementations of this protocol will also be sanctioned.

A comparison would be sanctioning the Matrix protocol because it facilitates end-to-end encrypted communication for terrorists.

I don't see a past precedent that targets an open protocol. Imagine the US sanctioning the open Matrix protocol.

GitHub has the right to do whatever it wants, and it makes sense they would take this action to avoid getting into legal concerns.

But it is deeply concerning. Whether or not you like crypto, you should not be supporting this if you are a researcher, academic, technologist, cryptographer, or privacy advocate. The code for Tornado Cash is a series of cryptographic and mathematical functions that can be repurposed for a variety of applications unrelated to privatizing user wallets.

Having it open source and accessible is a net benefit for the entire world.

EDIT: A comparison would be that US decides to sanction the open Matrix protocol and any developer that has contributed to it, as it can facilitate end-to-end encrypted terrorist communication.

It could be argued the sole intent of unleashing a virus on the internet is malicious. The sole intent of publishing a privacy protocol on GitHub is not. Look at Tor for comparison.

GitHub has a section on this[1]. There should be no problem with allowing this software online for research and educational purposes.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/acceptable-use-polici...

Is this the first time the US has sanctioned a cryptographic protocol? The quote you pulled specifically refers to "blocked person" but in this case they are not sanctioning a person - they are sanctioning a mathematical protocol that happens to have a popular open source implementation.

The US government already has the right to sanction crypto addresses, they just did today with Tornado Cash. USDC also has the right to freeze funds, they have done it already.

I would rather see the US support privacy, but if they refuse to allow their citizens the right to financial privacy, then at least they could provide better systems for regular users to keep their crypto transactions private from the entire world.

Not all users of Tornado Cash are money laundering. The US government positions Tornado Cash as a system for money laundering but it is more accurately described as a system for privatizing your transactions. A user with an identifiable ENS name might want to hold and trade some ETH without broadcasting every action to the entire world - this becomes a personal security risk - and Tornado Cash is a way to do this that is decentralized and cryptographically secure.

Users will be forced into other systems that are less tested and less regulated, forced to tie their wallet to the public ledger, or forced to pay high fees to centralized exchanges to achieve similar privacy.

One compromise would be a US-based smart contract mixer that provides strong privacy but allows the US government to request transaction history in extreme cases. These addresses can then be sanctioned, frozen by USDC and barred by all regulated CEX.

Pretty dumb but not surprising. Private transactions should not be something that is criminalized, but it is taking a trajectory like reefer madness and the drug war. User seeking financial privacy is now put in the same group as terrorists. Reminds me of arguments being made by governments around tightening the use of end-to-end encrypted chat apps.

Since this is a decentralized application running as an Ethereum smart contract with IPFS[1] interface, the move will not actually deter any state actors from using this, but will criminalize and stigmatize regular users who want to anonymize their Ethereum transactions.

The end result may be as the government wants: force users back to fiat so they can maintain maximum control of funds, and anyone left in the mixer is default a criminal.

[1] ipfs://QmU3j1B1UagFbfqgwWBu3yk1La657y8hoGoA24fG3QpPjf

Most people using crypto - actually running nodes, creating contracts, and sending messages on the blockchain - prefer it to dealing with traditional bank transfers and completely opaque centralized systems. It is often faster, easier, and cheaper to send USDC than USD, and it is far more programmable and extensible to develop an ERC20 contract than hope for a Stripe SDK or Shopify plugin.

People will still use it even if the government attempts to cut it off entirely. Net result is that legitimate users will be treated as criminal, and/or will be forced to use broken banking infrastructure.

The simplest use case and reason that crypto should continue to be developed is that it allows you to hold an asset with financial value in a decentralized global network.

If you live in the US and notice that bank transfers are significantly cheaper and faster in the UK or EU, you cannot just set up a UK bank account in your town. You are forced into the American “bank protocol.”

In crypto, you can withdraw your funds from one entity auch as MetaMask and deposit it into another such as Argent, Gnosis or zkSync, because all of the tokens and applications are composable with each other and build on the same protocol.

This is the “works on my machine” of the banking world. Local transfers in the UK work well but if you try to do the same transfer to a non-UK bank account, you will no longer have those same features. This is because each country implements it’s own banking protocols. In crypto, there is a single protocol that all users agree on, and so you can trade ETH, USDC, and other tokens all in the same way regardless of your physical residence.

It turns out the Bitcoin thesis was only half successful. It did not end up becoming peer-to-peer electronic cash, but it did succeed in creating a decentralized ledger that is tamper proof, resistant to double spend attacks, and can facilitate peer-to-peer transfers. This part of the technology can be used to operate other ideas, like stablecoins and decentralized identity systems.

This would only apply to centralized exchanges and intermediary payment processors. A user can still trustlessly and anonymously transfer 1 ETH or 1000 DAI to another person in exchange for some goods or services, as they would with a cash transfer under the table.

It is like asserting that marijuana could easily disappear if we just regulated it a little harder.

the idea of web3 isn’t that everybody runs their own server. It’s that everybody is using a shared source of truth - the blockchain - that is not centrally owned. So for that data, you are not locked into any platform even if you never self host, which most people don’t.