Privacy protocol Tornado.cash added to the sanctions list by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

The privacy protocol Tornado.cash is a popular mixing platform used in multiple cryptocurrency hacking incidents to reduce the ability to trace fund flows. In April of this year, Tornado.cash was involved in the case of a $600 million hacker attack on the Axie Infinity cross-chain bridge Ronin, as announced by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. After laundering money through the protocol, the addresses subject to sanctions by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the United States voluntarily cooperated and will be restricted from using the Tornado Cash application.

The privacy protocol Tornado.cash is a popular mixing platform used in multiple cryptocurrency hacking incidents to reduce the ability to trace fund flows. In April this year, Tornado.cash was involved in the laundering of $600 million from the Axie Infinity cross-chain bridge Ronin hack, leading to the sanctioning of addresses involved by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), rendering them unable to use the Tornado Cash application.

Today, on August 8, OFAC proactively added the Tornado.cash mixing protocol and its platforms TORNADO CASH CLASSIC, TORNADO CASH NOVA, and the website tornado.cash to the sanctions list. Additionally, OFAC sanctioned multiple addresses associated with Tornado.cash, including mixers for ETH and USDC.

Despite Tornado.cash previously voluntarily blocking sanctioned addresses, the money laundering activities on Tornado.cash have drawn regulatory attention, resulting in the inclusion of its protocol-related addresses and website on the sanctions list.

As of the deadline, there has been no response from the official Tornado.cash Twitter account. However, it was announced today that the TORNADO CASH CLASSIC user interface has been open-sourced. This implies that any developer can now use the TORNADO CASH CLASSIC protocol through this open-source interface. Nevertheless, since the relevant addresses have been sanctioned, users and interface providers may bear legal responsibilities.

Review: "Tornado Cash protocol blocks sanctioned addresses, web comments deem it meaningless"

Shortly after the news, the Tornado.cash token TORN experienced a drop of over 20% as of 10 am on August 9: