Cash From 2021 DAO Maker Crypto Hack Being Mixed Through Tornado Cash
$500,000 worth of the dai stablecoin, stolen last year, is being sent through the notorious mixer.
Sep 9, 2022 at 6:26 a.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/EPVOQPOWBFA7PHDAGCGYQVEF3E.png)
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
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Crypto mixer Tornado Cash once again finds itself as the nexus of stolen tokens from a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, as PeckShield has spotted $500,000 of dai (DAI) moving through its pipes.
- Crypto mixers are protocols that obscure the destination of tokens making them harder to track.
- In August 2021, crypto fundraising platform DAO Maker (not related to Maker DAO) suffered a hack that resulted in the loss of $7 million in various stablecoins and ether (ETH).
- Immediately after the 2021 hack, on-chain data shows the funds were sent to two wallets.
- One of the wallets sent approximately 3,800 ether ($6.2 million) to Tornado Cash.
- The other wallet, which held the balance, remained dormant until today, according to on-chain data.
- Earlier this year Tornado Cash was used to mix $15 million in ether, stolen from Singapore-based Crypto.com.
- Tornado Cash’s frequent nexus to stolen funds triggered a debate if its complicit in money laundering, with its founder saying that the protocol isn’t controlled by any single entity and is designed to be unstoppable.
- In August, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash prohibiting all U.S. persons and entities from interacting with the protocol.
Separately, Coinbase (COIN) is sponsoring a lawsuit to try to get the protocol removed from OFAC’s list.
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