Pertsev’s 2022: 2022 was a challenging year for the developer. First, the United States Treasury Department brought sanctions against Tornado Cash for allegedly laundering the equivalent of $7 billion in crypto since its inception in 2019. Shortly after that, Pertsev was arrested on Aug. 10 by authorities in the Netherlands. He was accused of exerting control over Tornado Cash’s voting rights and being the platform’s de facto decision-maker. Pertsev, however, has maintained that he was just an open-source contributor to the protocol. The protocol’s founders, Roman Semenov and Roman Storm, were not arrested. The case ignited regulatory debates regarding how privacy solutions could be used by money launderers, and whether those costs outweigh the benefits. Web3 enthusiasts have also expressed concerns about the precedent set for open-source code contributors to projects worldwide. In response to Pertsev’s arrest, Coinbase filed a lawsuit, asserting that the sanctions will stifle innovation and violate people’s privacy in the crypto community. As a result of the sanctions, Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, froze over 44 addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control.