[zomglings]

Tornado Cash doesn't maintain accounts for those users. They are using Ethereum accounts created completely independently of Tornado Cash.

The contracts are permissionless. Any Ethereum account can call the "deposit" function. That same account can generate a zk-proof of the deposit. Any Ethereum account can withdraw, provided they have a proof of deposit.

The proof of deposit could be communicated in any number of ways that have nothing to do with Tornado Cash - mail, email, Signal, whatever.

If the account into which you are receiving a withdrawal doesn't have money to pay for the transaction, you can send your proof to a relayer who submits the transaction for a portion of the withdrawal amount. Because it's a zero-knowledge proof, the relayer does not know which account made the initial deposit.

The whole system is private and permissionless. I don't know what Tornado Cash could do other than simply indicating that a known bad actor made a deposit.

[eropple]

> The whole system is private and permissionless. I don't know what Tornado Cash could do other than simply indicating that a known bad actor made a deposit.

Not exist.

Like, this is the fundamental disjoint between this complaint and reality. "Your system behaves enough like a pattern that is core to how society works" is the filter here, not "have I cleverly designed it to not perfectly fit the pattern". The law isn't applied via robot.

[zomglings]

If I were a money launderer, I would take the libre Tornado Cash smart contracts, the libre Tornado Cash zk circuits, and the source-available Tornado Cash relayer, and run the whole thing myself. I would pay someone to operate relayers using cash, gold, diamonds... something hard.

Does that mean the creator of the mathematical concept and the code should be punished?

I understand what you are saying, though. My complaint is really that the authorities are willing to stifle such radical innovation to continue to maintain control. Even that shouldn't be a surprise, but I continue to feel outrage when I see this kind of thing.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I would pay someone to operate relayers using cash, gold, diamonds... something hard.

Side remark: diamonds are not hard, see

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?

> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...

> https://web.archive.org/web/20240510011736/https://www.theat...

[eropple]

> Does that mean the creator of the mathematical concept and the code should be punished?

Code isn't an idea, code's a thing you make. There are entire classes of thing that are illegal for a citizen of many countries to make or possess or both. While I don't particularly care about this case except in the general "cryptocurrencies appear to exist for grift and need to actually prove their value to society or be stomped" sort of way I view all of it, it isn't legally outlandish.

> My complaint is really that the authorities are willing to stifle such radical innovation to continue to maintain control.

I don't think a system of blind drops but, in fine patent-office-esque fashion, With A Computer are particularly innovative at all, so this is begging the question.

[jncfhnb]

> Does that mean the creator of the mathematical concept and the code should be punished?

You mean the guy that launched the service? Yeah.