-Privacy is a human right.|
+Privacy is freedom.|
-On August 8th, 2022, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
-sanctioned the smart contracts associated with Tornado Cash on the terms
- of facilitating money laundering. This influenced widespread acts of
-censorship on Ethereum to inhibit the usage of the protocol and
-ultimately labels all active users for seeking individual anonymity
-on-chain, as criminals. The public nature of accounting on distributed
-ledgers is a flaw, not a benefit. It's the act of substantiation and
-non-repudiation that gives this enabling technology its true value.
+Welcome to tornado.ws (also .social): a community dedicated to maintaining
+the original Tornado Cash protocol and building on top of it!
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-- Tornado Cash Community + +Please note that the Tornado Cash contracts have been sanctioned in the US, where it is considered illegal for citizens to interact with them. +
-The sanctimonious ideology that privacy should be only for the selected -"faithful" few has huge implications for discrimination enacted through -censorship, privacy is an individual right that everyone should be -entitled to. The ongoing acts of surveillance authored by "the state" -not only put individual sovereignty at risk but individuals' well-being. - This is apparent in the recent travel rule legislation regarding -digital currencies, as seen in the European Commission's recent Transfer - of Funds Regulation (TFR) amendment. European law is puppeteered by the - Financial Action Task Force (FATF) through what is called "directives". - The FATF, in turn, is an overarching branch of the American government -that has legal immunity, and no oversight although having global -influence in regulation. These legislations not only create honeypots of - individuals' financial data but set out to blacklist privacy-preserving - technologies like Tornado, declaring a war on privacy. +We hold to the principle that surveillance is dangerous +and violent, and that wanting secrecy is something natural +to all human beings.
-These are the same figures that have failed to regulate private equity's - additional attacks on individual privacy, by accommodating the -solicitation and commoditization of individuals' sensitive data. These -people are not set out for your best interest, time and time again they -have failed the common people. On the profiteering of individuals' data, - Joseph Lubin - the man behind ConsenSyS - holds the power to -de-anonymize almost every single Ethereum transaction. Given the -notoriety and popularity of the infrastructure that he ultimately -controls, as the majority shareholder of Infura and MetaMask. To no -surprise, Infura and other RPC service providers like Alchemy were the -first entities to censor relays to the Tornado contracts. Let us remind -you, that these entities are actively profiling your transactional -footprints, for reasons for solicitation and cooperation with -authoritative figures to void your economic rights. +If you click the button below, you will find access links to the application, +otherwise, in the top right, you will find social and repository +links tied to this community.
-The ripple effects of the sanctions also resonated with "decentralized" -or, should we say, pseudo-decentralized protocols. Pocket Network, which - solicits itself as a permissionless RPC relay protocol. Undertook -efforts to censor all relays, the sheer misleading marketing should -remind everyone not to trust venture-capital backed entities at face -value. Who ultimately want to profit off individuals and will even lie -to do such as that. Another notable accolade for these unjust acts of -censorship goes to Flashbots, an MEV-specific Ethereum client for -capitalizing on financial inefficiencies on-chain. Given that -approximately 80% of Ethereum's hashrate uses their client this has -immense implications and let us remind you, it is also a venture-backed -entity. Last we save a special homage to TRM labs, which is a digital -asset compliance firm to assist with the prevention of potential legal -contingencies. Not only are this firm's tactics completely -overamplifying cautionary measures but it is backed by entities that -have clear conflicts of interest with the nature of the industry. -Clients of theirs integrated frontend restrictions on addresses that -have ever transacted with Tornado, either directly through multiple -degrees of separation. Essentially restricting and mislabelling the -large majority of Ethereum addresses. Here's a special shout-out to out -to the servile TRM Labs customer base that is dYdX, Uniswap, AAVE, -Balancer, Ren Protocol, and MakerDAO, all of which are funded by Silicon - Valley vulture capital. -
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-Lest we forget, we saw 5 years of publicly funded and collective work of - open-source software censored overnight. Microsoft - the corporate -behemoth that tainted Github, once an open collaboration tool for -publishing software - purged all repositories of the official Tornado -Cash organization and even went so far as to censor all core -contributor's personal accounts. This heinous overreach drastically -stifles the education and innovation of zero-knowledge cryptography. -Countless individuals referenced the source code for student curricula -and experimentation, as officially stated by Johns Hopkins University -professor Matthew D. Green through the advocating support of the -Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). This is not the first time we've -seen censorship of open source software, which in itself is a violation -of free speech. --
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-The basis of which the sanctions concerning the protocol as a mixer are -groundless, because of the presence of zero-knowledge cryptography in -its systematic design. This guarantees, that only the original deposited - assets that have been committed can only be redeemed, and not -commingled funds. Peter Van Valkenburgh, a representative of Coin Center - portrays this logic through the precise analogy of safety deposit -boxes. It is evident, that the policymakers behind the sanctions do not -understand the subject they are attempting to regulate. We'd like to -thank both Coin Center and the EFF as the only organizations to advocate - and take formal action against this totalitarianism. --
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-It is apparent that the true colors of actors and organizations reveal -themselves in a time of crisis, and we encourage everyone who believes -in freedoms to boycott and scrutinize the entities that have -over-willingly aided the infringement of digital rights. As a group of -dedicated contributors to Tornado, old, new, and future. We pledge an -allegiance to circumvent these acts of censorship. Privacy is an -individual right that is open to everyone. Community resources to -archive and accelerate the development and education of the source code -have been deployed, alongside a Telegram server to align community. -Active research priorities have revealed themselves at the birth of the -crisis for the organization going forward. A privacy-preserving, -censorship-resistant, and network-agonistic RPC solution will be -actively developed to ensure the accessibility of the protocol. -Additionally, the legacy infrastructure of the internet is not a -suitable place for the freedom of expression under the reign of ICANN. -Thus, efforts will be undertaken to re-empower the original premise of -the world wide web. --
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-Join the fight against the surveillance state. --- Tornado Cash Community + +Please note that the Tornado Cash contracts have been sanctioned in the US, where it is considered illegal for citizens to interact with them. +