Vitalik Buterin Donates 30 ETH for Tornado Cash Developers’ Legal Defense

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 30 ETH (~$111,000) to the legal defense fund for Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm.

The fundraising initiative Free Alexey & Roman was launched in January on the decentralized platform Juicebox. The transaction was made from the address vitalik.eth, associated with Buterin.

At the time of writing, the fund had received 875 payments totaling 592.43 ETH (~$2.2 million).

On May 14, a Dutch court found Pertsev guilty of laundering $1.2 billion through the crypto mixer. The developer was sentenced to 64 months in prison. He had been under arrest since August 2022 and was only placed under house arrest in April 2023.

Charges of money laundering and sanctions violations in the US have also been brought against Tornado Cash co-founders Storm and Roman Semenov. The former was released on bail and refused to plead guilty. The latter remained free but was sanctioned.

Buterin described Pertsev’s sentence as an “unfortunate” and “very sad” situation. However, the programmer noted that it might prompt a rethinking of the role of cryptocurrency mixers.

In recent months, Buterin has interacted with the anonymizer Railgun several times. Commenting on the use of the mixer, which is also employed by North Korean hackers Lazarus Group, he stated that “privacy is normal.”

Pertsev has appealed his sentence.