Tornado Stops: The Tornado Cash DAO Goes Unoperational After Blacklist

• Tornado Cash DAO went offline, along with its Discord channel.
• This was after the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioned the website.
• The Tornado team is debating ways to challenge the sanction.

Tornado Cash’s name started popping up in the midst of the bear market and a slew of bankruptcy filings. Things hit the fan when the crypto mixing software Tornado Cash DAO’s website went offline following the sanction of the website imposed by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control.

The sanction was due to Tornado Cash’s involvement in the money laundering of massive hacking operations, including those connected to state-sponsored North Korean cybercriminal gangs. The allegations came to the limelight after the arrest of Tornado Cash software developer, 29-year-old Alexey Pertsev, who was detained by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD).

Since the sanction has been imposed on the Ethereum-based protocol, the platform witnessed some of its resources have been rendered inaccessible. Furthermore, several entities have distanced themselves from Tornado Cash’s service, including Github, Circle, dYdX, Alchemy, and Infura.

However, the Tornado Cash team has been debating ways and brainstorming strategies to challenge the sanction and stay afloat. According to the rumors, the DAO was taken offline shortly after a community vote wherein the proposal addressed whether the DAO members should be added as signatories to the Treasury’s multi-signature wallet.

The plan received universal support even though the wallet purportedly controls funds worth about $22 million. The proposal’s author claimed switching to a four to six system would make the approval transaction easier. The author also pointed out that if something happens to two signers, they would still be able to access the community funds.

Following the acceptance of the proposal, links to the DAO Forum started displaying an error message. Additionally, the community’s discord service went offline, sending users to an invite error message. There haven’t been any definite indications as to what terminated either forum. However, the platform’s Telegram Channel is still operational.

Incidentally, prior to the imposition of sanctions, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that he used Tornado Cash to donate funds to Ukraine, aiming for the recipients’ financial privacy in the midst of a war-torn country. Meanwhile, earlier this week, an anonymous individual appeared to have used the crypto mixer to send ether (ETH) to many celebrities in an apparent attempt to cast doubt on the severity of the sanctions.