Despite US Treasury sanctions in August 2022, Tornado Cash continues to dominate as the top crypto mixer on the Ethereum network.
Recent data from crypto analytics firm Arkham shows that a whopping $77.35 million in assets passed through Tornado Cash contracts on the Ethereum Mainnet in the past month.
An impressive comeback
The mixer, which operates on seven different chains, has made a name for itself by allowing users to obscure the transfer of ten different crypto assets, with native ETH on the Ethereum mainnet being the most popular.
At its peak in July 2021, Tornado Cash managed over $700 million worth of ETH in its pool contracts. The platform suffered a significant setback following the sanctions, with assets falling by over 60% and transfer volume declining substantially.
Notably, this downturn was only temporary, as both total value (TVL) and transfer volume showed signs of recovery, even amid the arrest of two of Tornado’s three founders.
Currently, Tornado’s TVL is around 118.3K ETH, which is equivalent to around $187.9 million, according to Arkham data.
A closer look
As reported by U.Today, the US Treasury Department has sanctioned cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash, accusing it of facilitating the laundering of funds linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Despite Tornado Cash’s claims that it is a tool to protect financial privacy, the Treasury Department claims it has facilitated illegal transactions, including the laundering of $445 million stolen by Lazarus. Tornado Cash developers, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, were accused of aiding and abetting the laundering of more than $1 billion, with Storm arrested.
A Coinbase-backed group has lost a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Treasury Department’s actions against the popular mixer. Judge Robert Pitman has ruled that Tornado Cash is an identifiable entity with real estate interests in its smart contracts.
The US government’s sanctions on decentralized service Tornado Cash highlight the challenges of shutting down such services entirely as programmers use the open-source code to develop similar programs.