Developer Ports Tornado Cash Protocol to MegaETH Testnet After OFAC Sanctions Removal

A developer has successfully ported the controversial crypto privacy tool Tornado Cash to the MegaETH blockchain’s public testnet, enabling private transactions on the high-performance network.

MegaETH, which recently launched, boasts a throughput capacity of up to 20,000 transactions per second.

The developer, known pseudonymously as Gunboats, said the idea was sparked by the U.S. Treasury’s recent removal of Tornado Cash addresses from the OFAC sanctions list, following a court ruling earlier this year.

Tornado Cash Relaunches on MegaETH Testnet as ‘ETHTornado’

The new deployment on MegaETH is titled ETHTornado.

“I thought, maybe someone should try to deploy [Tornado Cash] on the hottest thing right now… there is no change in code needed and that’s really a good thing,” Gunboats wrote on X.

Describing the move as “half a joke,” Gunboats said they used the now-outdated Truffle framework to port the protocol.

Some in the crypto community raised concerns about the potential for wallet “dusting,” where small amounts of crypto are sent to many wallets, possibly affecting their eligibility for airdrops.

One X user, 0x_ultra, pointed out that several crypto projects disqualify wallets linked to Tornado Cash from receiving token rewards.

This follows a recent test by MegaETH in which 190,000 wallets received testnet tokens in just 15 seconds.

today im releasing a custom fluffle builder on FT!

few days ago @0xBreadguy asked me if i could make a custom builder so more people that don't own an NFT could join the @megaeth_labs movement, so here it is 🙂

link 👉https://t.co/1dvcGtXnnl

select any trait, zoom, and… pic.twitter.com/ek2QoUqbJD

— ultra (@0x_ultra) March 22, 2025

Gunboats dismissed the dusting issue as minor.

“It’s really silly anyway whether you can dust people’s wallet at 10ms or 12 seconds a time—the end result is you got put on the list,” they said.

Bread, MegaETH’s head of community and growth, reacted positively to the deployment, encouraging Gunboats to add the project to the platform’s community wiki.

Gunboats, who claims to be based outside the U.S., also brushed off legal concerns surrounding the project, referencing Roman Storm, a Tornado Cash developer facing legal action from the U.S. Department of Justice.

While the protocol has yet to gain traction on MegaETH, Gunboats noted the lack of a user-friendly frontend as a current limitation to broader adoption.

U.S. Treasury Lifts Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Citing Evolving Digital Finance Policies

The U.S. Treasury Department has officially lifted sanctions on the Ethereum-based transaction mixing protocol Tornado Cash, citing a reassessment of its approach to regulating decentralized financial technologies.

In a press release issued Friday, Treasury officials stated that the decision came after reviewing the application of existing sanctions laws to decentralized platforms.

The update follows a court filing earlier in the week in the case of Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury, where government attorneys acknowledged that advancements in financial technology demand a modernized legal framework for applying sanctions.

Although Tornado Cash is no longer on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list, the Treasury made it clear that it will continue to monitor and combat illicit use of digital assets, particularly in relation to cybercrime and North Korean-linked money laundering schemes.

“Securing the digital asset industry from abuse by North Korea and other illicit actors is essential to establishing U.S. leadership and ensuring that the American people can benefit from financial innovation and inclusion.”