Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly backed Tornado Cash co-developer Roman Storm, framing the case around a broader question: is society starting to treat writing code itself as criminal conduct? Storm is currently awaiting a court decision in the United States over a case tied to Tornado Cash, and Buterin said the prosecution is effectively putting a software developer on trial rather than targeting people who directly carried out money laundering or other financial crimes.
Buterin challenges the legal push toward criminal liability for developers
In his open letter, Buterin criticized what he described as a growing judicial trend of criminalizing software development. He argued that the central issue in cases like this is not limited to financial crime, but extends to whether legal responsibility is being pushed onto authors of code because their tools can be misused by others.
That distinction sits at the center of his argument. If developers face criminal charges simply because software may be used for unlawful activity, he said, the implications would go far beyond Tornado Cash and reach a much wider set of technologies built in the open-source world.
Privacy tools, in his view, are infrastructure rather than accomplices
Buterin said tools like Tornado Cash exist to protect personal data and transaction privacy, not to serve criminal activity. He described privacy as a longstanding safeguard tied to personal communications, freedom of movement, and financial life, rather than an extreme or novel political demand.
He also argued that before digital surveillance became widespread, individuals had far more natural control over their own information. Modern privacy software, he wrote, is an attempt to preserve that logic. Equating privacy technology directly with crime risks weakening rights that society had already treated as basic.
He says he used the software himself for legitimate purposes
Buterin did not keep the discussion theoretical. In the letter, he said he had personally used software developed by Storm for technical payments and for donations to human-rights charities, while making sure the related data would not be comprehensively collected and stored by corporate or government systems.
He also praised Storm’s engineering standards, saying the application continued to function properly even after years without maintenance. For Buterin, that durability reflected responsible technical work. He contrasted that with some consumer technology products that market themselves around privacy while delivering weak execution.
The implications could extend well beyond Tornado Cash
Buterin ended with a warning about the chilling effect such prosecutions could have on the broader technology sector and open-source communities. If legal systems keep treating software developers as potential criminals because their tools might be abused, he said, the damage would not stop with privacy software. Innovation around communications, encryption, and core internet infrastructure could also come under pressure.