The user interface (UI) code for cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash has been entirely open-sourced, according to its inventors, fulfilling their promise of total decentralization and transparency.
The protocol’s unknown developers announced Thursday’s full open-sourcing of the Tornado Cash Classic UI in a Medium blog post. Despite the protocol’s user interface being decentralized since 2020, anyone can examine the UI pools for Toronado Cash and submit pull requests to enhance the project. When a developer is prepared to merge fresh code changes with the project’s main repository, they submit a pull request in the realm of software development.
Technically, anyone can clone the repository and change the code however they see appropriate because of Tornado Cash’s open-sourcing policy.
“We personally grew fond of the black & green floating astronaut associated with the protocol,” the developers said, referring to the current website interface. “However, you should know our credo by now: We will always lean towards more decentralization. As far as we are concerned, our DAO took a step further with this great progress.”
Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are internet-native businesses that are collaboratively run by their users without the need for a central management structure or leadership. Midway through 2020, Tornado Cash made its DAO first known.
According to DeFi Llama, Tornado Cash currently has approximately $300 million in total value locked or TVL. When the project announced the debut of its layer-2 scaling network on Arbitrum in November 2021, this sum was more closely associated with $850 million.
Several decentralized finance attacks, like the $375 million wormhole assault in February and the more recent $100 million Horizon Bridge hack, have revolved around the Tornado Cash protocol. The protocol can only combine up to 100 Ether (ETH) at once right now.
Following the $600 million hacks of Axie Infinity’s Ronin software bridge in March, Tornado Cash was also successfully employed. VICE claims that the hackers were successful in transferring a chunk of the money, which was at the time around $100 million, to the protocol. Approximately 2,000 ETH were removed from the software bridge and transferred to the protocol in groups of 100 ETH starting in early April, according to a later report from Bloomberg.
The Toronado Cash community and creators, however, have issued a warning against instantly associating the protocol with bad behavior because practically any digital tool can be exploited for illicit purposes. The protocol’s goal is to give cryptocurrency users ownership of their privacy so they may choose when and with whom to reveal their data. The protocol contains a compliance mechanism that enables users to demonstrate the origin of their funds, according to the Tornado Cash website.
“Unfortunately, some news & stories come to tarnish the image of privacy tools such as Tornado Cash,” community members elected by the protocol’s DAO wrote in a Medium post earlier this year, adding:
“Community members of Tornado Cash DO NOT support such unlawful usage of the tool. It stands miles away from the values conveyed by the DAO. You cannot imagine how infuriating it is to notice that a few people can call into question both Tornado Cash’s reputation & our own usage of the protocol.”
