The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has contributed $1.25 million to assist Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev in his legal battle as he prepares to appeal his money laundering conviction in the Netherlands.
Announcing the donation on February 26 via X, the Foundation emphasized the importance of privacy and defended the right to write code without criminalization.
“Privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime,”
the X post read.
Pertsev later reposted the announcement, expressing his gratitude for the financial support.
“I’m very grateful that I can now completely focus on preparing my appeal. This means the world to me,”
he stated.
The donation comes just weeks after Pertsev was released from prison in early February as part of his pretrial release. He had been in custody since August 2022, when Dutch authorities arrested him over his involvement with the cryptocurrency mixing service. In May 2024, a Dutch court found him guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to five years and four months in prison.
Pertsev’s case is part of a broader crackdown on Tornado Cash, which has faced global regulatory scrutiny. The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the platform in August 2022. However, those sanctions were overturned on January 21, 2025.
The Ethereum Foundation’s donation is not the first show of financial support from the Ethereum community. In December 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin contributed 50 Ether (ETH), valued at approximately $170,000 at the time, to help fund the legal defense of both Pertsev and Roman Storm—another Tornado Cash developer who is set to go on trial in the U.S. on April 14.
Following Buterin’s donation, Pertsev publicly thanked his supporters, including Buterin and Gnosis co-founder Stefan George.
“Your support inspires me to move forward, and I’m forever grateful,”
he wrote.
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