What Is Tornado Cash (TORN)?
TORN is the native token of Tornado Cash, which is an Ethereum-based non-custodial private transaction protocol. It runs on a self-executable code and is fully permissionless. Make sure to check the Tornado Cash price chart above if you want to see the current TORN price.
Tornado allows private transactions through the use of Ethereum’s smart contracts by breaking down the on-chain connection between the sender's and recipient's addresses. It achieves that by employing zk-SNARKs (zero-knowledge proofs). Such proofs enable a user to demonstrate that he or she has a secret that corresponds to one of the deposits listed in the smart contract without revealing which particular deposit it is.
Thus, Tornado Cash is often referred to as a crypto mixer because it mixes all transactions, this way making it impossible to track which transaction came from where.
Besides, Tornado’s transactions are immutable, which means that no one has the right to alter them, not even developers. This is the case because, in 2020, the developers destroyed their admin keys using the MPC method to make the transactions completely trustless.
Who Founded Tornado Cash?
The Tornado Cash crypto project was founded by Roman Semenov and Roman Storm. Tornado Cash v1 was initially launched in August 2019. In the beginning, it was only experimental software. However, eventually, it became a fully decentralized technology that allows users to make private transactions.
Talking about the founders, Roman Semenov has a degree in quantum statistics and field theory. Apart from founding Tornado Cash, he founded Viking Studio, RedHelper, and PepperSec. Besides, he was also the CSA at a foundation focused on Ethereum’s scalability.
Roman Storm has a degree in metallurgical engineering. In the past, he worked as a software developer in such companies as Betfair, Marketron, Vault12, UserTesting, and Amazon. Besides, he was a blockchain developer at Blockchainlabs.nz and the CTO of the POA Network. Additionally, together with Semenov, he also co-founded PepperSec.
Use Cases of TORN Tokens
The Tornado Cash tokens are based on the ERC-20 token standard. The primary use case of TORN is governance. This means that TORN token users have the right to vote on various decisions that influence the future development of the Tornado Cash crypto project.
Tokenomics of TORN
The max supply of Tornado Cash coins is 10 million. 55% of the supply was locked in the Tornado Cash DAO Treasury. The remaining portion was split between founding developers, early supporters, anonymity mining, and early users of Ethereum pools on Tornado.
Don’t forget to check the Tornado Cash price chart above if you want to see the current (or the previous) TORN price.
Sanctions on Tornado Cash
Unfortunately, due to the complete privacy and anonymity of the Tornado Cash crypto project, it became a reliable tool for hackers to launder money and store stolen funds. Thus, on August 8th, 2022, the U.S. officially sanctioned Tornado Cash after receiving a huge amount of money laundering allegations.
Over the past three years, according to the US Treasury Department, more than $7 billion worth of digital assets have been laundered through Tornado Cash.
These sanctions resulted in a huge TORN price drop and harsh criticism online. In addition to that, the Dutch financial crimes agency arrested a 29-year-old developer in Amsterdam over suspected involvement in laundering money and concealing criminal financial flows of Tornado Cash.
