The source code for Tornado Cash, the platform sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, is available again in GitHub repositories.
Ethereum lead developer Preston Van Loon reported via his Twitter account that collaborative development platform GitHub has republished the source code for the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer.
GitHub had removed the crypto mixer's code from its platform following sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department, noting that Tornado Cash had allowed more than $7.000 billion dollars of illicit activities to be laundered using crypto assets and that this represented a threat to the nation's security.
However, in the middle of this month, the Treasury Department clarified its stance on the platform, noting that the sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash do not prevent citizens from interacting with open source.
In fact, through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Treasury made it clear that Americans still They can copy the source code of the platform, publish it online or in print and interact with it. What is prohibited or sanctioned in the country are cryptocurrency transactions in Tornado Cash and any interaction with Ethereum addresses associated with this protocol, the Treasury said.
Following this clarification, Van Loon requested GitHub to remove the ban on Tornado Cash's code.
On his Twitter account, the Ethereum developer cited OFAC statements, indicating that the sanctions imposed by the United States on Tornado Cash would not prohibit American citizens from copying the mixer platform's open source code and making it available online for others to view.
Other developers and members of the crypto community made similar requests to Van Loon, asking GitHub to reverse its decision and republish Tornado Cash's source code on its platform.
It may interest you: Is Tornado Cash open source illegal in the United States?
Tornado Cash and user privacy
One of the main reasons that has driven Ethereum developers to defend the Tornado Cash code is the right to financial privacyThe Tornado Cash platform allows its users to make transactions anonymously and privately, and although the government highlighted only its illegal use, a significant portion of the transactions made through this protocol were completely legal.
In addition to this, the broader crypto community also condemned the Treasury's actions as an overreaction, as instead of sanctioning malicious actors for their crimes, it did so against an entire open source technology which is closer to being a public good than a platform for illegal activities, as CoinDesk indicated after clarifications were made by the Treasury.
At the time of writing this article, the Tornado Cash source code is in “read-only” mode on GitHub.
VanLoon said that this shows progress on the part of the platform after an outright ban and that it will continue to encourage GitHub to reverse all actions against the crypto mixer, in order to return Tornado Cash repositories to their previous state.
Continue reading: Why has the United States banned Tornado Cash?
