Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has made a contribution to the legal defense fund for Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev.

Buterin gave 50 ETH, valued at approximately $170,000 at writing time, to aid the developers as they navigate mounting legal challenges.

The Donation

The news was shared through a Dec. 31 post on X by the Juicebox project Free Pertsev and Storm. One of the beneficiaries, Roman Storm, expressed gratitude for the funds in a separate post, describing it as a show of Buterin’s leadership and support.

 “Immense gratitude to Vitalik Buterin for his generous donation to my legal defense fund. Your unwavering support and leadership by example continue to inspire us all. Thank you for standing with me during this challenging time,” he wrote.

He also revealed that the recent donation represents about 25% of the $650,000 available through JusticeDAO, a community-driven initiative established to support their legal battles.

Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time Buterin has been involved in legal defense efforts for controversial cases. In 2022, he gave out 10 ETH, valued at $30,980 at the time, to the AssangeDAO legal fund created to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

More recently, in October, he offered 100 ETH, translating to about $240,000, to the Free Pertsev and Storm Juicebox. This was in addition to another contribution he made in May to the same cause of 30 ETH, worth around $113,000.

Tornado Cash Developers Face Ongoing Legal Challenges

The Tornado Cash crypto mixing protocol has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, especially with accusations from government agencies that it was being exploited by malicious actors for illicit activities, including money laundering.

In August 2022, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the platform, alleging that North Korean hackers had used it to launder more than $7 billion in crypto since 2019.

The legal action intensified scrutiny on the service, with Dutch authorities arresting co-founder Alexey Pertsev in 2022. He was later found guilty of money laundering in May 2024, upon which he received a prison sentence of over five years. Pertsev is currently appealing the verdict.

In the United States, Storm and fellow developer Roman Semenov face charges of money laundering, sanctions violations, and fraud for their involvement with the crypto mixer.

Storm was released on bail and is awaiting trial, which has been rescheduled to April 14, 2025, after being postponed from its original date in December 2024. Meanwhile, Semenov remains at large.