Ethereum Foundation Donates $500,000 for Tornado Cash Co-Founder's Legal Defense

The Ethereum Foundation has pledged a significant $500,000 to support the legal defense of Roman Storm, a co-founder of Tornado Cash. This donation comes as Storm prepares for his trial, scheduled for July 14, 2025, in Manhattan federal court. The charges against Storm include conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter, conspiracy to launder money, and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions. The foundation has also pledged to match up to $750,000 in community contributions, demonstrating a strong commitment to supporting Storm's defense.

The Ethereum Foundation's donation is seen as a stand for privacy and open-source development. In a statement, the foundation emphasized that "privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime." This stance reflects a growing resistance within the crypto community against what is perceived as overreach by U.S. authorities in their scrutiny of decentralized, open-source tools.

Storm was indicted in August 2023 for his role in building and maintaining Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer accused of facilitating the laundering of over $1 billion in illicit funds. The service allegedly allowed users to obscure the source and destination of transactions, an activity that U.S. authorities claim was exploited by hackers and criminal networks to move stolen assets. Storm's trial comes at a time when prosecutors and regulators are increasing their scrutiny of crypto tools tied to privacy and decentralization. His defense has argued that the case threatens the foundation of decentralized finance (DeFi) by criminalizing open-source development.

Storm's co-founder, Roman Semenov, was also charged in the case but remains at large. A third developer, Alexey Pertsev, was convicted of money laundering by a court in May and sentenced to more than five years in prison. He is currently under electronic monitoring as his appeal progresses. Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2022, which claimed the tool had facilitated over $7 billion in illicit transactions since 2019 and failed to adopt safeguards against criminal misuse.

Storm’s legal team previously sought to dismiss the charges, arguing that OFAC overstepped its authority by sanctioning the mixer’s smart contracts. This motion followed a separate ruling in a related case that questioned the agency’s reach over decentralized code. With the trial approaching, the Ethereum Foundation’s contribution marks one of the most high-profile shows of support yet for Storm and raises broader questions about how far developers should be held responsible for permissionless code.