Ethereum Mixer Tornado Cash Is Blocking Sanctioned Users

Authorized addresses will not be able to interact with the Tornado Cash front end, but will not interfere with the interaction with smart contracts.

Tornado Cash confirms compliance

Tornado Cash has begun to block users from accessing the front end.

Tornado Cash @chainalysis An Oracle contract that blocks OFAC-approved addresses from accessing dapp.
Maintaining financial privacy is essential to maintaining our freedom, but we must not sacrifice non-compliance. https: //t.co/tzZe7bVjZt

— ?️ Tornado.cash ?️ (@TornadoCash) April 15, 2022

Posted by the team behind the Ethereum protocol, which is commonly used as a mixer to protect transactional privacy. Tweet On Friday, we confirmed that we are leveraging an Oracle contract from security analytics firm Chainalysis to block Ethereum addresses licensed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, US Treasury. “Maintaining financial privacy is essential to maintaining our freedom, but we must not sacrifice non-compliance,” writes Tornado Cash.Announcement included Etherscan link Added to the Chain Analysis Agreement, indicating that three addresses have been added to the list since March 10th.

The day after it was revealed that North Korea’s Lazarus Group was behind a $ 550 million Ronin network attack on March 23. The Treasury has posted an update indicating that the Ethereum address 0x098B716B8Aaf21512996dC57EB0615e2383E2f96 has been added to the sanctions list.Then a chain analysis was posted Tweet Storm Make sure you have flagged the product address.

Tornado Cash helps users obscure Ethereum’s transaction history by allowing them to deposit their assets in a contract and then withdraw from another address. This makes it more difficult to track the footprints on the chain. Supports ETH and other Ethereum compatible assets. It is a popular tool among DeFi hackers considering money laundering because it helps maintain anonymity. Tornado Cash has historically boasted an unauthorized, censorship-resistant nature, but the latest move towards regulatory compliance has been criticized for its opposition to true decentralization. Several prominent crypto users criticized the team’s decision in response to Tornado Cash’s post. “”I need a new mixer. Who makes it? ” Said Pseudonym Twitter user basedkarbon. However, keep in mind that while Oracle can block the use of the Tornado Cash app by address, it does not prevent direct interaction with smart contracts.

Tornado Cash is not the first app to succumb to regulatory pressure.In another move that was angry by the crypto community, Bitcoin mixer wasabi said it would start in March. CoinJoin Blocks certain transactions to the mixing protocol. The update revealed the identity behind the DAO hackers Chainalysis cracked Wasabi’s CoinJoin implementation and nearly killed Ethereum in 2016, raising questions about whether cryptographic mixing services can really provide anonymity. It was done later. The tornado cache update sounded a further warning, now only crypto purists are asking if Ethereum’s top mixers are really censorship resistant.

Disclosure: At the time of writing this, the author of this work owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.