Crypto-Mixing Service Tornado Cash Code Is Back on GitHub

The move by GitHub comes as Ethereum developers have called for platforms that host the mixer service to not ban Tornado Cash code.

Sep 22, 2022 at 8:34 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 22, 2022 at 9:15 p.m. UTC

No one knows exactly what the fallout from the Tornado Cash sanctions will look like. (Antonio Masiello/Getty Images) — (Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

Margaux Nijkerk reports on blockchain protocols with a focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a very small amount of ETH and other altcoins.

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Code repositories for the Ethereum-based mixer Tornado Cash were relisted on GitHub on Thursday.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) banned Americans last month from using Tornado Cash, a decentralized privacy service that mixes cryptocurrencies together to obfuscate the original address. The mixer was blacklisted and designated under the Specially Designated National list because the North Korean hacking group Lazarus had used it in the past.

GitHub is a centralized internet hosting service for software development often used by Ethereum developers. Within hours of the OFAC announcement, GitHub, along with other platforms, removed Tornado Cash from their sites in order to comply with the new U.S. regulation.

Ethereum developers – believing that computer code is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – have called for platforms that host the Tornado Cash code to reverse their bans. In particular, Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon asked for GitHub to relist the mixer’s code on Sept. 13.

Earlier this month, OFAC released clarifications on how Americans could recover their funds that were locked with Tornado Cash.

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