Vitalik Buterin donates 50 ETH to Tornado Cash developer legal fund

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has made a contribution to the legal defense fund of Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev.

Buterin donated 50 ETH, valued at roughly $170,000 at the time of writing, to help developers as they navigate mounting legal challenges.

The Donation

The news was shared via a December 31 post on X of the Juicebox Free Pertsev and Storm project. One of the recipients, Roman Storm, expressed gratitude for the funds in a separate post, describing it as a sign of Buterin’s leadership and support.

“Immense gratitude to Vitalik Buterin for his generous donation to my legal defense fund. Your unwavering support and leadership by example continue to inspire us all. Thank you for being with me during this difficult time,” he to write

He also revealed that the recent donation represents about 25% of the $650,000 available through JusticeDAO, a community-driven initiative created to support his legal battles.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time Buterin has been involved in legal defense efforts for controversial cases. In 2022, he gave 10 ETH, valued at $30,980 at the time, to the AssangeDAO legal fund created to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Most recently, in October, he offered 100 ETH, translating to about $240,000, to the Free Pertsev and Storm Juicebox. This was in addition to another contribution he made in May to the same cause of 30 ETH, worth about $113,000.

The developers of Tornado Cash face constant legal challenges

Tornado Cash’s crypto-mixing protocol has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, especially with accusations from government agencies that it was being exploited by malicious actors for illicit activities, including money laundering.

In August 2022, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the platform, alleging that North Korean hackers had used it to launder more than $7 billion of crypto dollars since 2019.

The legal action intensified scrutiny of the service, with Dutch authorities arresting co-founder Alexey Pertsev in 2022. He was later found guilty of money laundering in May 2024, for which he received a sentence imprisonment of more than five years. Pertsev is currently appealing the verdict.

In the United States, Storm and fellow developer Roman Semenov face charges of money laundering, sanctions violations and fraud for their involvement with the crypto mixer.

Storm was released on bail and is awaiting trial, which has been rescheduled for April 14, 2025, after being pushed back from its original date of December 2024. Meanwhile, Semenov remains at large .

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