Three blockchain advocacy groups filed an amicus curiae brief on April 5 to defend Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm from criminal charges in the United States.
The filing supports Storm’s motion to dismiss the charges against him and presents several arguments to protect the developer from such legal action.
The Blockchain Association said there were “significant flaws” in the government’s case and that its adoption could have a “negative impact” on the cryptocurrency industry.
Marisa Tashman Coppel, the group’s legal director, argued that the government’s treatment of Tornado Cash as an unlicensed money transmitter is unfounded. Under 18 USC § 1960 and FinCEN regulations, the sender must have fully independent control over the user’s assets.
She said:
“You cannot be a money transmitter if you do not have the ability to move funds independently on your behalf.”
Tornado Cash and its developers have no control over your funds because the protocol is self-running and immutable. Instead, users maintain control over their assets held in pools managed by non-custodial smart contracts.
CoinCenter Weight
Peter Van Valkenburg, research director at CoinCenter, said the U.S. government “wrongly charged Tornado Cash developers with criminal conspiracy.”
Like the Blockchain Association, Valkenburg and CoinCenter have minimized the role of developers in Tornado Cash operations by referencing the platform’s smart contract-based pools.
Valkenburg also explained that Tornado Cash’s software tools and UI are non-essential. This means that the defendants did not execute any trades, commingle assets, receive funds, or provide secret notes, even if the platform was used for such purposes.
He compared Tornado Cash to TurboTax, which offers users a useful tax-paying method but cannot file and pay taxes on their behalf.
CoinCenter also presented legal arguments supporting software publishing under freedom of expression and legal immunity for information trading. Comparing Tornado Cash to SWIFT, it said that both platforms only process information and should therefore be free from direct sanctions.
DeFi Education Fund
The DeFi Education Fund argued that developers should not be held liable if third parties use their software for criminal activity.
Chief Legal Officer of the Group; Amanda TuminelliThe U.S. government explained that it has never used a specific statute, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), in a similar way.
In more than 100 recent cases investigated by the DeFi Education Fund, governments have accused defendants of interacting with sanctioned individuals. However, platform developers like Tornado Cash have no such counterparty.
Motion to Dismiss
Storm and his attorneys initially filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charges on March 29. Each advocacy group’s amicus curiae brief explicitly supports the motion.
As the trial is still in progress, it is not yet clear whether the dismissal application will be successful. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Roman Storm in August 2023, and he is scheduled to be bailed until his trial in September.
The U.S. State Department also indicted Roman Semenov, another Tornado Cash developer, along with Storm. Semenov’s location is unknown.
The U.S. Treasury and OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, alleging that the company had laundered more than $7 billion in cryptocurrency since 2019. It linked some of its activities to the Lazarus Group, an organization sponsored by the North Korean government.