Sanctions are being imposed on Americans that infringe on free speech and privacy rights, affecting privacy tool Tornado Cash for Ethereum users. Blue chip open source protocols like Aave, Uniswap, and Balancer have started blocking wallets that have interacted with the Tornado Smart Contract. However, malicious actors can also weaponize Tornado Cash and can lead to dangerous situations for legit crypto and NFT projects. Monero privacy focused crypto protocol issued a major upgrade involving 71 developers and implemented new features for faster transactions and improved security. The race to scale Ethereum with different projects focused on zk rollups, focusing on scalability and eliminating gas fees.
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Sanctions Imposed on Americans Infringing Free Speech and Privacy Rights
The recent sanctions imposed on Americans who use tornado cash to conceal their cryptocurrency transactions pose an existential threat not just to defy, but to free speech and privacy rights. Tornado cash is a privacy tool for Ethereum users that helps keep transactions private. However, the sanctions have sparked an intense debate and had an immediate ripple effect across crypto and DeFi.
Blanket Blocking Wallets
Popular blue-chip open-source protocols like AVE, Uniswap, and Balancer have started blocking wallets that have ever interacted with tornado smart contract. This action can lead to dangerous situations for legit crypto and NFT projects because there are no ways to deny an incoming tornado cash transaction. Also, the crackdown on tornado cash might just be round one, and the D5 sector is faced with a choice: remain proudly non-compliant or bend the knee.
Alternative Backups to Access the Back End
According to Eric Wall, who shared his thoughts via Twitter, it is crucial to let them censor and remain compliant while ensuring that alternative backups exist to access the back end of the decentralized protocol. Wall’s point is that one can leverage this loophole and stop being a dummy.
Tornado Cash Down 50% After Sanctions
After the sanctions, Tornado Cash Ethereum token toned down 50%, and the governance token price has steadily declined since regulators took action on Monday. The coin mixers’ protocol shutdown DAO as it couldn’t fight or put itself at risk against the US, and contributors are scared of being prosecuted.
Monero’s Upgrade
Monero has been successfully upgraded, involving 71 developers who worked on its implementation. The upgrade increases the number of signers for a ring signature from 11 to 16 for every transaction. When it comes to ring signatures, they make it impossible to trace the origin of a Monero transaction, ensuring privacy. Additionally, Monero has seen an improvement in multi-signature functionality, and critical security patches were added.
The Race to Scale Ethereum
Many projects are working on scaling Ethereum, including the likes of zk EVM rollups, StarkNet, zk Sync, Polygon, zk EVM, and Scroll. These projects focus on improving Ethereum’s scalability, zero knowledge, and making the network speedier. The Merge is also expected to introduce many benefits to the network, making it more usable.
In conclusion, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is always preparing for attacks on privacy rights and free speech. Therefore, the focus should be on projects’ decentralization and improving scalability to accommodate more users. Monero’s upgrade is a step in the right direction for privacy-focused protocols, while Ethereum’s scaling projects work to make the network speedier and more usable.
