Solana Policy Institute Donates $500,000 to Defend Tornado Cash Developers
Date: 2025-08-29 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: BUSINESS
Solana Policy Institute CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levin expressed serious concerns about the current prosecutions of software developers. According to him, such processes create a dangerous precedent that can slow down the development of the crypto industry and stop technological innovation. “If a programmer risks criminal liability for creating a tool that someone uses illegally, then why develop something new?” the top manager noted.
Last week, Assistant US Attorney General for the Criminal Division Matthew Galeotti emphasized that writing code in itself is not a crime. In response, Whitehouse-Levin said that the Solana Policy Institute expects this principle to be put into practice, and in the meantime will continue to support Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, along with other crypto community representatives speaking out on their behalf.
In early August, the Southern District of New York found Roman Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed money transfer service, but acquitted him of charges of violating international sanctions. Alexey Pertsev was previously sentenced by a Dutch court to 64 months in prison for assisting in laundering $1.2 billion through Tornado Cash. In May, Pertsev filed an appeal against the court's decision.
The Solana Policy Institute has allocated $500,000 to cover the legal costs of the developers' defenders to ensure that they can fully defend themselves and draw attention to the need for more balanced regulation of cryptocurrency technologies. The organization believes that supporting lawyers and publicly defending the principle of innocence for creating code will be an important step in protecting the freedom of developers and stimulating innovation.
The institute emphasizes that the risk of criminal prosecution for creating software products can scare away talented developers and slow down the adoption of new technologies. They hope that raising funds to protect Tornado Cash will signal to the entire industry the need for legal protection for software creators and maintaining a balance between regulation and innovation.
Thus, the support of the Solana Policy Institute not only helps individual developers in complex legal cases, but also focuses on issues of legal certainty and protection of technology freedom, which are key to the future of the cryptocurrency sector.
