原文作者：BlockBeats
原文来源：BlockBeats
Today, a Dutch judge found Alexey Pertsev, one of the founders of Tornado Cash and a core developer, guilty of money laundering in the s-Hertogenbosch court. The court sentenced Pertsev to 64 months in prison. Over the past year, the DeFi regulatory issues raised by Tornado Cash have been a source of great concern for the industry. This year, despite the team's repeated emphasis on its compliance propensity, Uniswap, the "big brother" in the DeFi space, was sued by the SEC. Today, how does Tornado Cash's guilty verdict affect future DeFi startups? How will DeFi coexist with regulation in the future?
Is it also difficult to escape DeFi regulation as a result of the separation of the team and the protocol?
The trial in the Tornado Cash case continues to sound alarm bells for other cryptocurrency services.
In April 2023, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released an assessment report on illegal financial activities in DeFi, which revealed potential risks in DeFi services and provided an in-depth analysis of the use of these services by illegal actors to carry out criminal activities. Three months later, four U.S. senators introduced the Cryptoasset National Security Enhancement and Enforcement Act, which also aims to strengthen regulations in the KYC, AML and DeFi sectors.
The Cryptoasset National Security Enhancement and Enforcement Act provides a new framework for regulating DeFi, requiring that DeFi be regulated in the same way as any other cryptocurrency institution, requiring that any "person" who can control the project be accountable to the project. The bill may mention that any investor who invests more than $250,000 in the project should be responsible for the DeFi service if no one controls the service.
Echoing the current regulatory buzz, the focus of the Pertsev trial is whether laws designed to curb money laundering can adapt to values such as blockchain-based financial innovation and anonymous transactions.
In a hearing that Pertsev went through in March, prosecutors argued that the protocol developers did not do enough to prevent criminals from taking advantage of Tornado Cash. Pertsev's defense countered that prosecutors should consider the open-source and automated nature of Tornado Cash's core smart contracts. "It would be a mistake to hold Pertsev accountable to Tornado Cash users, as these users are anonymous and independent by design."
Keith Cheng, Pertsev's defense lawyer, said there was nothing the project team could do to stop users from using the open-source smart contract code in any way they liked. The contributor to the protocol is a decentralized organization that does not have a single person in charge like traditional companies.
But prosecutors rejected such arguments, arguing that the merits of the technology outweighed the legal obligation to prevent platforms from helping criminals and sanctioned entities, such as the North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group, conceal the origin of stolen assets. Prosecutor Martine Boerlage said that "Tornado Cash is not just a smart contract, it operates like a company."
But perhaps because of the controversial nature of the case, Pertsev's trial in the Netherlands was opaque, and prosecutors did not disclose his indictment until a week before Pertsev's trial. Prior trials and a series of hearings were also conducted in Dutch.
Still, Pertsev won a variety of supports, including petitions, lawyer fundraising, and a statement from a hacked agreement that he was not guilty. The crypto community, particularly the developer community, has expressed an outcry against Pertsev's arrest, fearing that the charges against Pertsev could set a dangerous precedent for the conviction of software developers.
Earlier, someone outside the Dutch court distributed posters in support of Alexey Pertsev
Previously, the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulators (DOJ) filed criminal charges against Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, alleging that they conspiracy to launder money, violate sanctions, and operate an unlicensed money transfer business during Tornado Cash's operations, and that they face at least 20 years in prison.
Storm was arrested last year and will stand trial in September this year, and Semenov has not yet been arrested. The outcome of Pertsev's verdict this time is likely to determine the outcome of the future trial of these two Tornado Cash founders.
Tornado 后,Uniswap 案成焦点
In fact, after Tornado Cash, there are quite a few crypto protocol owners who have been charged with criminal activity that took place on it. For example, Uniswap was accused of allowing fraudulent tokens to be issued and traded on the protocol, a lawsuit that was eventually dismissed by the court in 2023.
Late last year, a16z wrote a commentary letter for the Financial Stability Board's (FSB) event on "International Regulation of Cryptoasset Activity", which began by mentioning the need to discuss the differences between DeFi and CeFi, and how a proper DeFi regulatory framework should regulate Web3 applications rather than Web3 protocols (which regulate businesses, not software). There has been ongoing debate about where DeFi protocols and applications fit into the regulatory environment, but even so, most legal experts agree that any DeFi front-end with U.S. ties (broadly defined) must comply with U.S. sanctions laws.
And on April 11 of this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a warning to Uniswap Labs on Wednesday that it plans to take enforcement action against the company. It is reported that the warning was issued in the form of a "Wells Notice", which the SEC sends to a company before initiating a formal lawsuit, giving the company a last chance to refute any allegations. At this time, it is unclear the specific nature of the SEC's charges against Uniswap Labs.
The market reacted very sensitively to the news, and according to market data, the price of UNI fell all the way from $14 to the current $9.58 due to the news of "being warned by the SEC", a 24-hour plunge of more than 14%. During this period, the on-chain transaction volume of UNI token surged, and even rushed to the top of the Dexscreener Ethereum token hot list.
Uniswap responded in a timely manner. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams took to social media to confirm that Uniswap Labs had received a warning from the SEC and published an open letter to fight back. In the letter, Hayden mentioned that the team believes the product they are offering is legitimate, and accused the SEC of not committing to clear, informed rules, but instead choosing to focus on attacking quality players in the crypto space like Uniswap and Coinbase, while allowing bad guys like FTX to "slip away."
In addition, Hayden's letter specifically emphasized Uniswap as a US-based Internet company to demonstrate its long-term commitment to compliance. At the same time, Hayden also mentioned that this battle with the SEC will last for several years and is ready to appeal to the Supreme Court.
After being sanctioned, it is still the largest crypto mixer
Tornado Cash is a privacy-preserving protocol that mixes 10 cryptocurrencies, with the most mixed asset being native ETH on the Ethereum mainnet. At its peak in July 2021, the Tornado Cash pool held more than $700 million in ETH in the contract.
A week before Pertsev's trial, an indictment shared by the court showed that between July 9, 2019, and August 10, 2022, "in at least a few of these countries, the Netherlands, Russia, the United States, or Dubai, Pertsev developed a habit of laundering money with one or more other people." The court held that Pertsev should at least suspect the criminal roots of illegal transactions on the Tornado Cash platform.
The indictment lists nearly 40 transactions totaling 535,809 ETH from different crypto platforms that Tornado Cash processed, including KuCoin and Liquid, the exchanges that FTX acquired before its collapse in 2022. The largest amount, 175,100 ETH (about $585 million), came from Axie Infinity's Ronin network and involved the largest theft in cryptocurrency history at the time. The attackers were the notorious North Korean hacker group Lazarus.
In August 2022, Tornado Cash and related Ethereum addresses were added to the U.S. Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), when the U.S. Treasury Department claimed that Tornado Cash was a key tool for the North Korean hacking group Lazarus, which had led the Axie Infinity $625 million hack and other major cryptocurrency thefts.
According to the analysis, as of early May 2022, Lazarus Group has transferred 37,000 Ethereum, or about $100 million, to Tornado Cash. Some experts say that "the black money of official hackers in a certain country" accounts for 20% of the balance held by the Tornado Cash smart contract.
Tornado Cash has said that despite all the efforts it has tried, it has not stopped the Lazarus Group from adding black money to it. After all, Tornado Cash itself is positioned to help users confuse their on-chain transaction history.
The crypto community also believes that developers are political prisoners of the U.S. government just for writing code, and that this sanction involves more than just attacks on cryptocurrencies. However, the sanctions did not have a shocking impact on the Tornado Cash project itself, and in the following month, $77.35 million in assets were still transferred through Tornado Cash on the Ethereum mainnet.