Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin transferred 80 ETH to the Railgun crypto mixer. At the current exchange rate, the programmer’s transaction is valued at approximately $300 thousand.
Vitalik Buterin supports online privacy tools
The Ethereum co-founder regularly sends funds through Railgun. However, recently it turned out that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group is using the cryptocurrency mixer. According to some estimates, cybercriminals have already managed to launder more than $60 million worth of Ethereum through the service.
Vitalik Buterin responded to the news of his transfer and Railgun’s connection to Lazarus, saying that “confidentiality is normal.” According to him, the crypto mixer uses a security pools protocol, which makes it difficult for attackers to join and does not violate user privacy.
How does Railgun work?
Railgun is an EVM-compatible privacy protocol that enables anonymous transactions in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.
In a recent interview, a Railgun representative explained that the service is powered by zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs). In addition, with zk-SNARKs, the crypto mixer ensures user privacy in decentralized applications (dApps).
One of the functions of Railgun is the so-called private proof of innocence. However, this feature allows you to prove that users did not interact with scammers on the blockchain and are not connected with them in any way.
Crypto mixer also includes auditing functions. Meanwhile, using a special private key, the user can show his transactions to third parties. Moreover, the latter will only be able to view the data, but not change it.
Crypto Mixers, Privacy, and the Lazarus Problem
Railgun became for the Lazarus Group an alternative to another cryptocurrency mixer – Tornado Cash, which came under sanctions from the US government in August 2022. However, according to regulators, more than $9 billion in criminal funds have been laundered through the service since 2019.
Almost immediately, law enforcement agencies arrested the developers of Tornado. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov are under house arrest. Moreover, Storm’s trial is scheduled for September this year.
Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to five years in prison last week. Prosecutors said he helped launder more than $1.2 billion through the mixer. Pertsev denies all accusations, and the crypto community supports him in this.
Previously, Tornado developers founded the JusticeDAO Foundation to raise money for legal proceedings. They managed to raise more than $350 thousand. Meanwhile, representatives of Coinbase and even Edward Snowden, who said that privacy is not a crime, contributed.
