ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Shannon Corless, former Treasury Department official, interviews Ruben Amenyogbo, founder and CEO of Architect, a Swiss regulated global investment firm active in digital assets since 2017 with backings including Kiki, Privy, Worldcoin, and Zama. Ruben opens by explaining why Architect made the deliberate choice to be licensed rather than unregulated, framing it as both strategic and economic. Strategically, most of the world's capital sits behind regulated walls (large pension funds, endowments, insurance companies), and those institutions can only face regulated counterparties. Economically, an institutional grade setup commands a higher price point and management fees than offshore prop shops can charge. Ruben walks through the reality of billion dollar institutional due diligence, describing the structured progression from informal team conversations through deep diligence on business continuity planning, deputization, reserves, and insurance against long tail risks. On AML and compliance, he distinguishes firms that structure around compliance from those that structure within it, advocating for KYC at both capital formation level (knowing who is investing in the vault) and market level (ensuring capital isn't commingled with illicit assets when flowing into the market). On the geopolitical question of whether dollar backed stablecoins extend or erode US dominance, Ruben notes that while 95% plus of stablecoin flows are USD denominated, the fact that assets are dollar pegged does not mean the rails serve US interests, which is why figures like Jamie Dimon have publicly called out Brian Armstrong. He explains Architect's relocation to Switzerland during the Gensler era due to hostile regulatory conditions in the US. He closes with his three wave thesis: continued education and proof of concepts now, competitive dynamics among asset managers next, and osmosis bringing the largest balance sheets last, urging builders to avoid shortcuts that would compromise their reputations with institutional diligence teams. 00:00 Introduction 00:31 About Ruben and Architect 01:19 Why Architect Chose to Be Regulated 02:27 Strategic Reasoning: Capital Behind Regulated Walls 03:23 Economic Reasoning: Institutional Cost Base and Fees 03:50 What a Billion Dollar Due Diligence Process Looks Like 04:52 The Shift From Foreplay to Deep Diligence 05:20 Questions Cryptonative Founders Don't See Coming 06:24 AML, Sanctions, and Source of Funds as the Real Objection 06:47 The Two Levels of KYC 07:14 Structuring Around vs Within Compliance 08:02 KYC at the Capital Formation Level 08:22 KYC at the Market Level and Commingling Risk 09:16 Risk Management as a Risk Adjusted Returns Function 09:41 Mapping the Universe of Risk 10:14 Tools, Policies, and Screening Partners 10:51 Does Crypto Extend or Erode US Dollar Dominance 11:49 Stablecoin Flows Are 95% Plus USD Denominated 12:18 Who Controls the Rails Is the Contested Question 13:00 Capital Pools and the Politicization of Asset Management 14:00 Why Architect Incorporated in Switzerland 14:48 Operating Out of Palo Alto During the Gensler Era 15:19 The Global Mandate and Distributed Team 15:51 What Grown Up Looks Like for Digital Assets 16:26 The First Wave: Continued Education 17:02 BlackRock Bitcoin ETF and Securitize as Proof Points 17:33 Competitive Dynamics Among Large Asset Managers 18:07 Osmosis at the Allocator Level 18:54 What Five Year Winners Will Have Built 19:32 Avoiding Shortcuts That Get You on Treasury's Radar 20:00 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ameen Soleimani

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Ameen Soleimani, CTO of 0xbow, presents his approach to privacy without terrorists, opening with gratitude for being American and a warning that cypherpunk values of free speech and open source depend on American law. He recounts the history of Tornado Cash, the original privacy protocol on Ethereum, built because Ethereum users were jealous of Zcash's private money features. His nonprofit MolochDAO funded the initial grants in 2019 and coordinated setting the admin key to zero so the protocol was immutable forever, making it the second ZK-SNARK deployment in history after Zcash. People used it for personal privacy and Vitalik used it to support Ukraine, but after North Korea stole over $600 million and ran hundreds of millions through it, the US Treasury sanctioned the protocol in August 2022, and developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm each received five year sentences. Ameen argues the Tornado Cash devs should not be held liable for users' crimes since they had no criminal intent and the protocol was immutable, warning that Roman's conviction for unlicensed money transmission (despite being non-custodial) implies everything is illegal, since even Etherscan could be considered a money services business. He stresses the appeal succeeding matters for clarity across Ethereum wallets and applications. Addressing the anonymity set problem, he explains privacy pools, developed in a paper co-authored with Vitalik and chain analysis researchers, where users voluntarily prove their deposit belongs to an association set of non-illicit funds without revealing which one, separating good money from bad while avoiding a data honeypot. He details how 0xbow performs KYT checks rejecting untrusted sources while allowing rejected funds to rage quit as an escape hatch preserving non-custodianship. Having anonymized over $20 million on mainnet over a year, he introduces privacy pools v2 (live on Sepolia) with a shielded pool for fully anonymous in-pool transfers hiding sender, receiver, amount, and timing, compliance by default, and features like private payment requests and future DeFi yield. He closes arguing the compromise of hard entry and exclusion without retroactive deanonymization is right, since backdoors can be turned against you, and that privacy will become a national security concern. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Gratitude for Being American 00:51 Why Cypherpunk Values Depend on American Law 01:19 The Origins of Tornado Cash 01:49 MolochDAO Funding and the Immutable Admin Key 02:10 The Team That Rage Built It in Three Weeks 02:20 Personal Privacy and Supporting Ukraine 02:43 North Korea and the Treasury Sanctions 03:04 Supporting Roman Storm at the Courthouse 03:26 Why the Devs Could Not Be Liable 03:45 The Compliance Tool They Built 04:00 Why the Conviction Makes Everything Illegal 04:30 Why Roman's Appeal Must Succeed 04:45 The Protocol That Grew After the Sanctions 05:04 The Anonymity Set Responsibility 05:36 With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility 05:55 Correcting the No Legitimate Use Case Narrative 06:16 The Federal Reserve Report Recommendation 06:35 Why the Honeypot Problem Matters 06:41 The Privacy Pools Paper With Vitalik 07:21 How Association Sets Work 07:49 Separating Good Money From Bad 08:00 Presenting the Paper at the Bank of International Settlements 08:14 How the Deposit and KYT Check Works 08:35 The Rage Quit Escape Hatch 08:50 A Year Live: Over $20 Million Anonymized 08:58 Privacy Pools V2 and the Shielded Pool 09:21 Why Shielded Pools Beat Confidentiality 09:42 Compliance by Default 10:09 How Rejecting a Deposit Protects Everyone 10:34 Features: Private Payments and Future Yield 10:59 Walking Through the Deposit Flow 11:28 Approval Times on Mainnet 11:59 Making a Private Withdrawal 12:25 The Rage Quit Exit 12:56 Private Payment Requests 13:37 Why No Retroactive Deanonymization 13:50 Why Backdoors Can Be Used Against You 14:16 Privacy as a National Security Concern 14:48 Closing: Win Here, Win for the World _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this more technical talk, Greg Swirski from Reilabs explains how his team solved the Keccak bottleneck in zero knowledge SNARKs. He opens by grounding zero knowledge cryptography, often called the future of Ethereum and blockchain scaling, in three concrete uses. First, increasing transaction volume: today every Ethereum node must re-execute transactions to check they followed the rules, which caps throughput, but if validators only need to verify a proof rather than re-execute, the whole network can scale. Second, onboarding institutions safely through ZK-KYC, where you never upload passport data to a public chain but instead attest that you are not from a sanctioned country or are an accredited investor via a small proof revealing nothing else. Third, as volume and counterparties grow, private credit or risk scoring lets a party prove they have funds somewhere without revealing positions or strategies. The roadblock across all three is Keccak, the hash function Ethereum and every EVM chain uses to commit to blockchain state, which is fast on CPU but extremely expensive to prove inside ZK circuits, and far too entrenched to replace. Greg's key insight is that you almost never prove a single Keccak hash, always hundreds or thousands at once, and his team leveraged that to beat the state of the art. He shows why: modern ZKVMs spend around 40% of their time proving hidden Keccak hashes you never see in Solidity, storage proofs chain from block hash through state root to account to storage slot, and ZK-KYC wraps a fast but large STARK inner proof inside a tiny SNARK outer proof that must itself compute thousands of hashes. Whereas many use the ZK-friendly but CPU-slow Poseidon hash, their protocol Keccacheck lets you switch back to Keccak (about 10x faster than Poseidon on CPU) for roughly a 5x inner-proof improvement at small outer overhead. The approach builds on the GKR protocol, which expresses programs as polynomials and scales sublinearly (analogous to a GPU versus a CPU), but base GKR was too slow, so they custom-built every Keccak operation to run batch-wise across all instances at once. The result breaks even against a popular state of the art framework at roughly 16 to 32 Keccak instances and runs 10 to 30x faster at 200 to 500 instances. He closes on future applications like mobile proving where passport data never leaves your phone and privacy-preserving institutional ZK-KYC with on-chain agents, pointing to a blog post, white paper, and GitHub repo via QR code. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 A More Technical Talk 00:34 Who Works With ZK Circuits 00:55 Three Aspects of Zero Knowledge 01:03 Increasing Transaction Volume 01:25 From Re-Executing to Verifying Proofs 01:48 Onboarding Institutions With ZK-KYC 02:10 Attesting Without Revealing Passport Data 02:45 Private Credit and Risk Scoring 03:06 The Roadblock: Keccak 03:31 How Keccak Commits to State 03:56 Why Keccak Is Hard to Prove in ZK 04:18 Why We Cannot Just Replace It 04:43 The Key Insight: Proving Many Hashes at Once 05:07 Why We Always Deal With Many Instances 05:30 The Hidden Keccaks in Every Transaction 06:13 Proving Wallet Properties for Risk Scoring 06:33 Chaining Trust From Balance to Block Hash 07:00 The ZK-KYC Problem 07:27 Wrapping a STARK in a SNARK 08:11 Why the Outer Layer Needs Thousands of Hashes 08:35 The Hash Function Trade-Off 08:58 Poseidon vs Keccak 09:21 Introducing the Keccacheck Protocol 09:52 Building on the GKR Protocol 10:20 GKR and Sublinear Scaling 10:49 The CPU vs GPU Analogy 11:13 Applying GKR to Keccak 11:45 Why Base GKR Was Too Slow 12:17 Applying Operations Batch-Wise at Once 12:44 Breaking Even at 16 to 32 Instances 13:19 10 to 30x Faster at Scale 13:45 Still Room to Improve ZK Circuits 14:00 Accelerating Mobile Proving 14:19 Privacy-Preserving Institutional ZK-KYC 14:50 Where to Learn More 15:11 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Rene Reinsberg

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this talk, Rene Reinsberg, founder of Celo and Self, presents how Self is bootstrapping global-scale proof of human infrastructure using zero-knowledge cryptography and government-issued identity documents. He announces a partnership with Google and Tether where users can verify their unique humanity through Self, claim free stablecoins, and send them to their wallet — launching next month. The system works by NFC-scanning passports or national IDs, cryptographically verifying document authenticity through country signing certificate authorities, and generating zero-knowledge proofs without storing any user data. Rene explains how applications can then request disclosure proofs (age verification, country of origin, OFAC screening) without handling PII, making it preferable to traditional KYC. He connects this to the agentic world, citing examples like Moldbook (an agent social network acquired by Meta) and Rent a Human marketplace, arguing that proof of human becomes critical when agents need to verify human counterparties or delegate identity without exposing personal data. The system enables agents to hit verification barriers in workflows and trigger ZK proof requests back to the human, unblocking agentic commerce without sharing actual identity data with the AI. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Welcome and Context: From Celo to Self 00:57 Why Proof of Human Matters Now 02:32 Google and Tether Partnership Announcement 03:55 Google's Use of Self for Testnet Faucets 05:29 Vision: Social Services and UBI on Crypto Rails 06:31 Why Proof of Human Is Becoming Urgent 07:41 Government Identity Infrastructure as a Foundation 09:01 How Self Works: NFC Scanning and ZK Proofs 10:43 Why NFC Beats Traditional KYC in an AI World 11:43 Zero Knowledge: No Data Storage, No Trust Required 12:13 Disclosure Proofs: Age, Country, Sanctions Screening 13:56 Registration and SDK Integration 14:20 Proof of Human in the Agentic World 15:04 Moldbook and Agent Sybil Attacks 16:00 Rent a Human: Agents Hiring Verified Humans 17:14 Delegating Identity to Agents Without Sharing Data 18:36 Self for AI Agents: Unblocking Agentic Workflows 19:44 Resources: self.xyz and ai.self.xyz 20:09 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Celo X: https://x.com/Celo ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city

ETHGlobal · Oct 9, 2025

Learn how to build privacy-preserving identity verification with Self Protocol in this ETHGlobal Taipei 2025 workshop. Discover how biometric passports and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) enable applications to verify user attributes (age, nationality, sanctions compliance) without exposing personal data. The Self team demonstrates on-chain and off-chain integration of their SDK, including QR code flows for mobile verification and smart contract templates for attestations. With $10K in hackathon prizes for innovative implementations, this workshop covers everything from passport NFC scanning to ZK proof verification on Celo. Ideal for developers building compliant DeFi, airdrops, or age-gated dApps with real-world identity solutions. 00:00 – Introduction: Self Protocol & Anonymous Identity Verification 01:27 – Problems with Traditional KYC: Security & Friction 02:06 – Biometric Passports: NFC Chips & Digital Signatures 02:43 – ZK Proofs for Age, Nationality, Sanctions Checks 03:55 – User Flow: Passport Scanning → ZK Proof Generation 04:30 – Developer Integration: QR Codes & Disclosure Options 05:42 – Hackathon Prizes ($10K): On-Chain vs. Off-Chain Tracks 06:21 – Frontend SDK: QR Code Component & Attribute Configuration 07:33 – Backend Verification: Smart Contracts vs. NodeJS 09:24 – Smart Contract Deep Dive: SelfVerificationRouter 11:58 – Proof Validation: Scope, Attestation IDs, & ZK Proofs 13:56 – Extracting Passport Data (Birthdate, Nationality) 15:54 – Critical Note: Matching Disclosure Requests to Verification 17:22 – Architecture: TEE Servers vs. Future Client-Side Proving 19:02 – Protocol Layers: Commitment Merkle Trees 20:23 – Resources: GitHub, Docs, and "Not to Self" Blog _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇹🇼 *ETHGlobal Taipei* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal Taipei, a 3-day hackathon held April 4-6 2025, that brought together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Self Protocol X: https://x.com/selfprotocol ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Oct 9, 2025

Learn how to verify identities onchain using Self SDK in this ETHGlobal Cannes 2025 workshop with Remi Colin. Discover how to generate ZK proofs for age verification, nationality checks, and sanctions compliance without revealing sensitive data. This tutorial covers Self's biometric passport integration, mobile app flow, and SDK implementation for both onchain (smart contracts) and offchain (backend) verification. Includes live demos, bounty details ($10K prize pool), and developer tools for privacy-preserving identity solutions. 00:00 - Introduction to Self: ZK Proofs for Identity Verification 00:52 - Workshop Agenda: Protocol Context, Bounties & Hands-On Demo 01:33 - Problems with Traditional KYC (Privacy, Security, UX) 02:15 - Decentralized Identity Alternatives & Limitations 03:41 - Self's Solution: Biometric Passports + ZK Proofs 04:28 - Supported Attributes (Age, Nationality, Sanctions) 05:53 - Self Mobile App Flow: Registration & Disclosure 07:04 - Global Coverage & Document Support (map.self.xyz) 08:07 - Demo: Mock Identity Generation (Developer Mode) 09:22 - Proof Generation & Verification Architecture 10:51 - SDK Integration (QR Codes, Deep Links, Smart Contracts) 12:08 - Hackathon Bounties: $10K for Onchain/Offchain Apps 13:36 - Workshop Repo Walkthrough (Next.js + Solidity) 15:04 - Frontend Setup & Endpoint Configuration 16:38 - Demo: Mock Identity Proof Generation 18:31 - Customizing Disclosure Attributes (Age, Nationality) 20:48 - Backend Verification Logic (API Endpoints) 23:13 - SDK Parameters (Scope, Endpoint Types, User ID) 25:33 - Smart Contract Verification Setup 27:26 - Deploying Verification Contracts (Foundry/Hardhat) 29:57 - Scope Generation Tool (tools.self.xyz) 31:22 - Privacy Features: Proof Unlinkability 34:12 - Onchain Verification Demo (Contract Interaction) 37:36 - Reading Verified Attributes from Smart Contracts 40:51 - SDK Summary (Frontend, Backend, Mobile Coming Soon) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *ETHGlobal Cannes* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal Cannes, a 3-day hackathon held July 4-6, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal Cannes 2025 playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5N2DCwhcEshNW9C8knZ1T-&si=1dGpCcY1vvompWPr _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Self* X: https://x.com/selfprotocol ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHBerlin · Sep 4, 2024

ETHBerlin04 May 24-26, 2024, CIC Innovation Campus Keynote: Ameen Soleimani - The Fight for Privacy ETHBerlin04 - https://ethberlin.org - A Department of Decentralization event - https://dod.ngo The video features a speaker at ETH Berlin discussing the importance of privacy and the issues surrounding the Tornado Cash protocol, a privacy tool for cryptocurrency transactions. The speaker gives a historical perspective on military doctrine and relates it to current events in the crypto space, emphasizing the need for individual creativity and caution against designing systems that could be misused by future bad actors. The speaker argues that privacy is essential as governments may abuse power and full surveillance with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) is looming. They cite how good record-keeping (KYC) facilitated high casualties during the Holocaust as an example of misuse. Tornado Cash, which was funded by MolochDAO, is presented as a necessary tool for preserving privacy in financial transactions. However, it faced legal challenges after being used by North Korean hackers to launder stolen funds. The developers of Tornado Cash were arrested and faced serious charges despite their intent to create a secure, private system. The speaker discusses the legal battles of two developers, Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, highlighting the potential overreach of law enforcement and questioning the fairness of holding developers responsible for how their open-source tools are used. They mention various support efforts from the community, including amicus briefs filed on behalf of Tornado Cash devs against

ETHBerlin · Sep 4, 2024

ETHBerlin04 May 24-26, 2024, CIC Innovation Campus Peter van Valkenburg - Are there limits to the reach of US Sanctions laws? ETHBerlin04 - https://ethberlin.org A Department of Decentralization event - https://dod.ngo The video features a speaker discussing the implications of the Tornado Cash prosecutions and how US sanctions laws could potentially affect developers. The speaker, a lawyer from Coin Center, emphasizes the importance of legal advice for those working on privacy tools and censorship-resistant software. They explore the reach and limits of US sanctions laws, specifically the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and argue that sanctioning immutable smart contracts like those used by Tornado Cash may overstep legal boundaries. The video also touches on constitutional principles of free speech and privacy, highlighting the need for well-reasoned policy arguments to protect civil liberties in the digital world. The talk is part of a series addressing recent legal actions against developers of privacy-focused crypto tools and aims to provide clarity on the legal risks involved in such work.