Updated on:12/28/2025 05:31 PM 
The cryptocurrency community has rallied in support of Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev as they face legal challenges related to their work on the privacy-focused mixing protocol.
In a significant development, the Ethereum Foundation announced on June 12 a substantial donation of $500,000 to Roman Storm's legal defense fund. The foundation pledged to match an additional $750,000 from public contributors as the US money laundering case approaches its scheduled trial date.
Storm promptly acknowledged the foundation's support on social media platform X, emphasizing its critical importance in "standing up for privacy and the right to code." This latest contribution follows a $1.25 million grant previously provided by venture firm Paradigm earlier this year, bringing the total community-raised backing for Storm to approximately $3 million.
Currently, the Tornado Cash developer remains on $2 million bail in Washington state. Federal authorities arrested Storm on August 23, 2023, charging him with conspiracy to launder over $1 billion in cryptocurrency, including funds linked to North Korea's notorious Lazarus Group.
The legal proceedings are scheduled to proceed with a jury date set for July 14, 2025, as confirmed by a federal judge.
Separately, in the Netherlands, prominent advocacy groups Coin Center and the DeFi Education Fund have filed an amicus brief supporting Alexey Pertsev's appeal against his money laundering conviction. The legal filing argues that immutable smart contract code functions as a neutral technological tool and holding developers criminally liable would stifle innovation in the open-source ecosystem.
Pertsev's case previously received significant support through a $1.25 million grant from the Ethereum Foundation on February 26, carrying the same message articulated in Storm's funding campaign: "privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime."
Dutch authorities arrested Pertsev in Amsterdam on August 10, 2022, just two days after the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash. Following a trial on March 25-26, 2024, judges sentenced him to 64 months in prison on May 14 for facilitating the laundering of approximately $1.2 billion. He was released from prison under electronic monitoring on February 7, 2025, while his appeal continues in s-Hertogenbosch.
In a notable development, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) removed Tornado Cash smart contract addresses from its sanctions list on March 21, following an appeals court ruling that immutable code cannot be classified as property. This delisting eased certain token restrictions, however, the parallel criminal cases against the developers remain ongoing.
