Tornado Cash DEVs receive $ 500K from Solana Policy Institute to appeal against convictions

The Solana Policy Institute, a leading crypto -lobby group, announced on Thursday that it will donate $ 500,000 to help the legal defense of Roman Storm and Alexey Pertev – the developers of Ethereum Coin Mix Service Tornado Cash who was convicted of crimes in the United States and the Netherlands.

Storm condemned Earlier this month in Manhattan for the crime of exploiting an illegal money that the company is transmitting, and is now in the federal prison for up to five years. PTSEV was sentenced to more than five years in prison last year, after a Dutch court had found him guilty From money laundering.

The legal misery of both tornado -continuous developers have yielded concern within the crypto industry and wider technical circles. Proponents have long warned that successful convictions of both men for their work about the development and maintenance of the Tornado money platform can have major consequences for software developers in all contexts.

“These persecutions continue to form a horrifying precedent that threatens the software development industry,” said Miller Whitehouse-Levine, CEO of the Solana Policy Institute, in a blog post on Thursday in which the donation was announced. “If the government can continue developers to create neutral tools that abuse others, it fundamentally changes the risk alculus of developers.”

Although the Trump government has taken aggressive in many ways pro- approximation Since January, the Ministry of Justice has chosen the president get ahead With criminal prosecution against storm that was initially submitted by the Biden administration in 2023.

In a clear policy shift, however, a TOP -DOJ officer told an audience of crypto -industrial leaders that federal prosecutors will do that last week no longer chase The indictment that they successfully storm from, against, against Developers of “really decentralized” software that does not take custody of user funds, but is used by criminal entities to launder digital assets.

Crypto policy leaders have recently had to run a cord between applying the pro-Crypto movements of the Trump government, and warning for the risks if the condemnation of storm is maintained. The real test will come during the profession of Storm – which will clarify whether the Trump Doj has undergone a real change of heart on the subject of decentralized software developers and criminal liability.

The issue has become increasingly existential for the crypto industry as a whole. On Wednesday, 114 crypto companies and technical lobby groups – including the Solana Policy Institute – adorn letter At the Senate Banking Committee warned that they would jointly protest against an upcoming bill for crypto market structure if it was not explicitly released explicitly the decentralized software developers of criminal liability from the indictment that the Doj used to condemn a storm.

Today’s donation also affects an intra-industry voltage that has been brewing for several weeks.

Tornado Cash works on the Ethereum network and members of the Ethereum community have long vocal In their support for the legal defenses of Storm and Pertev.

In recent weeks, however, some players in the industry – in particular Bitcoin pioneer Erik Voorhees, the founder of Crypto Exchange Shapeshift and Venice AI—There wondered if prominent boosters of Solana, long A Rivorous network For Ethereum, the performance to support the Tornado -Contant developers in the name of defending broader crypto principles.

Today’s donation by the Solana Policy Institute seems to prevent criticism. But leadership of the organization, previously established This yearalso has particularly deep roots in advocacy for software developers in general, and for the developers of Tornado Cash specifically.