Tornado Cash support: Ethereum Foundation pledges $1M to Storm’s defense, entities boost Pertsev appeal

Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev received renewed support from the crypto community on their respective trials for deploying the open-source code behind the mixer.

The Ethereum Foundation on June 12 donated $500,000 to Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s legal defense. It said it will match another $750,000 from public contributors as the US money laundering case approaches trial. 

Storm acknowledged the pledge minutes later on X, describing it as critical to “standing up for privacy and the right to code.” The new commitment follows a $1.25 million grant from venture firm Paradigm earlier this year and brings total community-raised backing for Stormto roughly $3 million.

The Tornado Cash developer currently remains on $2 million bail in Washington state. Prosecutors arrested him on August 23, 2023, and charged him with conspiring to launder more than $1 billion in crypto, including funds moved by North Korea’s Lazarus Group. 

A federal judge has kept the July 14, 2025, jury date on the calendar. 

Advocacy groups file brief for Pertsev

In the Netherlands, Coin Center and the DeFi Education Fund lodged an amicus brief supporting Tornado Cash coder Alexey Pertsev’s appeal of his money laundering conviction. The filing argues that immutable smart contract code is a neutral tool and that holding developers liable would chill open-source innovation. 

Pertsev’s case already drew a $1.25 million Ethereum Foundation grant on February 26 that carried the same “privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime” message seen in Storm’s funding drive.

Dutch agents arrested Pertsev in Amsterdam on August 10, 2022, two days after the US Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash. 

Judges tried him on March 25 and 26, 2024, and sentenced him to 64 months for facilitating the laundering of roughly $1.2 billion on May 14. He left prison under electronic monitoring on February 7, 2025, while his appeal proceeds in s-Hertogenbosch. 

OFAC delisted Tornado Cash smart contract addresses on March 21 after an appeals court ruled the immutable code could not be sanctioned as property. The removal eased token restrictions but did not end the parallel criminal cases against the developers.

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