Three blockchain advocacy groups have submitted amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs on April 5th to defend Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm against criminal charges in the United States.

The filings support Storm's motion to dismiss the charges against him and present several arguments to ensure developers are protected from such legal action.

The Blockchain Association stated that the government's case has a "critical flaw," and if adopted, it could have "adverse repercussions" for the crypto industry. The group's head of legal, Marisa Tashman Coppel, asserted that the government's treatment of Tornado Cash as an unlicensed money transmitter is unfounded. According to regulations, money transmitters must have independent control over user assets, which Tornado Cash does not have.

Coppel said: "Without the ability to independently move funds on a user's behalf, one cannot be a money transmitter." Tornado Cash and its developers do not have control over funds because the protocol is self-executing and immutable. Users maintain control over their assets held in non-custodial smart contract pools.

CoinCenter's Director of Research, Peter Van Valkenburg, said the U.S. government "wrongly charged the Tornado Cash developers with criminal conspiracy." Like the Blockchain Association, he minimized developers' role by referring to the platform's smart contract-based pools. He explained that the developers did not execute transactions, comingle assets, receive funds, or provide secret notes, even if the platform was used for those purposes. He compared Tornado Cash to TurboTax, which provides a useful tool but cannot file taxes on behalf of users.

The DeFi Education Fund argued that developers should not be held responsible when a third party misuses their software for criminal activity. Their Chief Legal Officer, Amanda Tuminelli, explained that the U.S. government has never used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in a comparable way before. In over 100 other recent cases surveyed, the government accused defendants of interacting with sanctioned counterparties, which Tornado Cash developers do not have.

Storm and his lawyers initially filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charges on March 29th, which these amicus curiae filings explicitly support. The case is still in its early proceedings, and it is unclear whether the motion for dismissal will succeed. The U.S. Department of Justice charged Roman Storm in August 2023, and he will remain on bail until his September trial. Another developer, Roman Semenov, was also charged, but his location is unknown.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, alleging that the platform has laundered over $7 billion in crypto since 2019, linking a fraction of that activity to the North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus Group.