A developer known as Gunboats has ported the recently unsanctioned mixer Tornado Cash to the test network of the L2 project MegaETH. The new version of the protocol, named ETHTornado, has sparked concerns within the community.
putting tornado cash on fastest chain ever @megaeth_labs pic.twitter.com/NoxUsX3Mbf
— GUNBOATs ?? (@0xgunboats) March 21, 2025
“I thought maybe someone should try deploying [Tornado Cash] on the hottest [network] today. There’s no need to change the code, and that’s really a good thing. I assumed it was half a joke,” the developer commented to The Block.
Gunboats explained that he used the outdated Truffle framework to port the code to MegaETH. According to him, the procedure was quite simple, illustrating the progress of technologies and tools for smart contracts in recent years:
“Today you can just use Foundry and write everything in Solidity.”
The community has noted the risk of “dusting”—a type of attack on a cryptocurrency address where attackers send a small amount of tokens—”dust”—to the victim’s wallet. Often, the received sum is insufficient even to cover transaction fees.
you can now dust 190k wallets with tainted tornado ETH in just 15 seconds!
there’s never been a faster and cheaper way to mass-OFAC sanction addresses
truly remarkable; airdrop hunters take notes! ???️ https://t.co/f9bWoecuxr pic.twitter.com/YnENBWMv1D
— ultra (@0x_ultra) March 22, 2025
Sometimes, after sending “dust,” attackers monitor the movement of assets in the victim’s wallet, hoping the owner will attempt to consolidate the received assets with their own savings or withdraw to a centralized platform, thereby de-anonymizing the address.
In other cases, “dust” represents “malicious” assets. When attempting to sell such tokens, users may end up on phishing sites.
One user noted that assets processed through Tornado Cash could be used to “tag” numerous large addresses in the DeFi ecosystem.
A thought from the bathroom.
What if someone dusted the top 10mm wallets in DeFi with tornadod assets?
If everyone has the infection, does anyone suffer from the Scarlett letter?
Off to bed I go
— Nach | BTC Arc (@Nach_211) March 22, 2025
Some industry services track tokens associated with mixers and exclude their owners from airdrop lists. According to the user, if most active market participants are “infected,” special restrictions against Tornado assets will lose their meaning.
Gunboats himself dismissed claims of increased risks.
“It doesn’t matter if you can ‘dust’ people’s wallets every 10 ms or every 12 seconds, eventually you ‘get on the list’,” the developer noted.
According to him, the MegaETH version of Tornado Cash is not yet widely used due to the lack of a user-friendly interface.
In March, Coinbase became the largest centralized Ethereum node operator.