Tornado Cash goes live on MegaETH testnet as OFAC lifts sanctions

An anonymous developer has ported the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash to the recently deployed MegaETH public testnet.

On March 21, the developer, who goes by Gunboats on X, confirmed they’d successfully deployed the privacy-focused protocol, calling the contract ETHTornado.

The move brings Tornado-style private transactions to the MegaETH ecosystem for the first time.

MegaETH, which recently launched its public testnet, is positioning itself as a high-performance layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution.

Unlike traditional rollup-based approaches, MegaETH aims to scale Ethereum directly via a single high-throughput layer. 

It claims to handle up to 20,000 transactions per second with 10 millisecond block times, significantly faster than Ethereum’s mainnet and competitors like Solana’s, which boast a real-world throughput of around 1,500 TPS.

Tornado Cash is expected to benefit from MegaETH’s high throughput and low-latency environment.

In comments to crypto media, Gunboats said he was inspired to port Tornado Cash to MegaETH after the US Treasury removed the protocol’s wallet addresses from its sanctions list earlier this year.

He noted that no changes to the original code were needed to get it running on MegaETH and highlighted how much simpler smart contract deployment has become over the years. 

Though he used the older Truffle framework for the port, he pointed out that modern tools like “Foundry” make it even easier today.

However, he added that the new contract hasn’t seen much activity yet due to the lack of a user-friendly front-end interface.

While some community members lauded the move, others raised concerns over the legal implications.

Gunboats, however, brushed off the criticism, noting that he’s not based in the US and appeared unconcerned about any legal fallout.

US Treasury lifts Tornado cash sanctions

On March 21, the US Department of the Treasury officially lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash, removing the protocol and over 100 associated Ethereum addresses from its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list.

The move reversed sanctions first imposed in August 2022 by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which had accused the platform of supporting money laundering operations.

A federal appeals court ruled in November 2024 that OFAC had overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts. 

The court found that these contracts were not the “property” of any specific foreign entity and, therefore, fell outside the scope of OFAC’s jurisdiction.

Yet the legal battle surrounding Tornado Cash is still far from over.

Roman Storm, one of the project’s co-founders, is scheduled to face trial in July for allegedly helping develop the protocols used to obfuscate illicit transactions. 

Storm’s legal team recently pushed for the dismissal of his charges following the appeals court decision, but the request was denied in February.

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