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## What Is Tornado Cash (TORN)?

Tornado Cash aims to solve a number of the [privacy](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/data-privacy) and [anonymity](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/anonymous) issues in the crypto world, particularly surrounding traceability of transactions. Tornado Cash v1 was launched in August 2019 as an experimental software, and later evolved into a fully [decentralized](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized) [non-custodial](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/non-custodial) protocol that permits [private](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/private-blockchain) transactions. 

Tornado Cash utilizes [smart contracts](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract) on the [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) network. The protocol is able to achieve this level of privacy by disrupting the [on-chain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/on-chain) link between the [addresses](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/public-address) of the sender and recipient. Often, the implementation of this technology is referred to as a “decentralized mixer.” The immutable nature of the protocol means that no transactions can be changed or tampered with, not even the developers, which assures the highest level of privacy to its users.  


## Who Are the Founders of Tornado Cash?

Roman Semenov, a co-founder of Tornado Cash graduated from Moscow State University where he studied Quantum Statistics and Field Theory. Following University, he worked in e-commerce and social media, having founded two companies in those fields. In 2017, Semenov branched into crypto, working as a Chief Software Architect at a foundation specifically focusing on Ethereum scalability. In 2018, he founded PepperSec, a white hat hacker security consultant agency, which led to the creation of Tornado Cash.

Roman Storm, another co-founder of the protocol, has a long resume of positions in the tech, blockchain and software world. He previously worked as a Software Engineer at Amazon and Marketron. He also served as the Chief Technology Officer at the POA Network. Storm also held a position as a Blockchain Developer for Blockchainlabz.nz. Together, he and Semenov founded PepperSec and started Tornado Cash. 


## What Makes Tornado Cash Unique?

Tornado Cash is entirely [permissionless](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/permissionless) and runs a self executable code. In May of 2020, the developers destroyed their admin [keys](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/private-keys-the-keys-to-your-crypto), which means that they themselves do not have the ability to see or alter any transactions that occur on their protocol. The team states that they do not have much oversight over the protocol aside from publishing code to GitHub, arguing that financial privacy is essential to freedom. 

The cryptographic method (MPC) used to destroy their admin keys means that transactions on Tornado Cash are “trustless and completely unstoppable,” in the words of co-founder Roman Semenov. The level of anonymity means that transactions on Tornado Cash can even potentially evade sanctions.

The protocol is often criticized for its usage by hackers who can use it to store their stolen funds, and has been cited as a vehicle for money laundering. Despite the ultra secrecy of the protocol, some have argued that there may be a way to track transactions if there is a large deposit and low liquidity.


## Tornado Cash Sanctioned by the United States

On August 8th 2022,[ Tornado Cash was officially sanctioned by the U.S](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/u-s-sanctions-tornado-cash-to-stop-it-laundering-funds-for-malicious-actors) after a series of allegations that the coin mixer had been used to launder money from American citizens.

Specifically, the U.S Treasury Department claims that over $7 billion in digital assets has been laundered through Tornado Cash over the past 3 years. The announcement of these sanctions brought about a massive price drop, some high level trolling and even an arrest. 

[An anonymous Tornado Cash user has been sending 0.1 ETH to public accounts of celebrities](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/tornado-cash-user-trolls-u-s-by-sending-0-1-eth-to-a-list-celebrities) and other high-profile users, potentially implicating their accounts and underscoring the question of what these sanctions actually mean for crypto users. In terms of other legal repercussions, a 29 year old software developer at Tornado Cash has since been arrested.


#### Related Pages:

Learn more about the concept of [Privacy Coins](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-privacy-coins) and the legal issues surrounding them. 

Find out more about [Monero](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/)  — one of the top anonymous cryptocurrencies.

Read more about[ Helix](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aave/) — a pioneer in “Bitcoin” mixing technology.

Interested in deeper analysis and industry leading reports? Check out [CMC Research](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/cmc-research).

New to this space and want to learn more? Visit [CMC Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria), our educational portal.


## How Many Tornado Cash (TORN) Coins Are There in Circulation?

At the time of writing in August 2022, there are approximately 1.1 Million TORN coins in circulation. TORN has a maximum circulating supply of $10 million. 

According to their whitepaper, the TORN [tokenomics](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/tokenomics) and [token issuance](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/token-issuance) schedule is as follows:

5% (500,000 TORN): Airdrop to early users of Tornado.Cash ETH pools

10% (1,000,000 TORN): Anonymity mining for Tornado.Cash ETH pools, distributed linearly over 1 year

55% (5,500,000 TORN): DAO treasury, will be unlocked linearly over 5 years with 3 month cliff

30% (3,000,000 TORN): Founding developers and early supporters, will be unlocked linearly over 3 years with 1 year cliff


## How Is the Tornado Cash Network Secured?

Tornado Cash runs on the Ethereum network and is secured by [zero-knowledge proofs](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/zero-knowledge-proof-2). The Tornado Cash protocol and the anonymity mining protocol has been audited by several professional audit companies including Zeropool.


## When Will Tornado Cash Trading Begin?

$TORN began trading in February 2021, when it airdropped 5% of its total supply (500,000 TORN).  


## Can TORN Hit $100?

TORN launched at a trading price of $214.29 and hit an all time high of $436.16 in February of 2021, but has since lost 95% of its value. 


## Where Can You Buy Tornado Cash (TORN)?

You can purchase Tornado Cash at most leading centralized and decentralized exchanges including: [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/), [Gate.io](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gate-io/), [Uniswap](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/uniswap-v2/), [OKX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okx/), [BingX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bingx/), [CoinW](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinw/), [Sushiswap](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/sushiswap/) and [Deepcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/deepcoin/). For a full list of eligible exchanges, find out more[ here](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/torn/markets/). 

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C.R.E.A.M Finance is a decentralized  DeFi lending protocol for individuals, institutions and protocols to access financial services. Part of the yearn.finance ecosystem, C.R.E.A.M. Finance is a permissionless, open source and blockchain agnostic protocol serving users on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain Polygon and Fantom.

Users who are passively holding Ether or wBTC can deposit their assets on C.R.E.A.M. to earn yield, similar to a traditional savings account. For more information visit https://app.cream.finance/.

The C.R.E.A.M. Finance protocol was created as a Compound Finance fork.

C.R.E.A.M Finance is open-source, permissionless, blockchain-agnostic and offers yield farming rewards to its users in order to inclusively develop its network.

The project (which stands for Crypto Runs Everything Around Me) was launched unexpectedly on the Ethereum network on Aug. 3, 2020 through the YOLO liquidity pool. In September 2020 it went live on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

The CREAM token allows users to lend, borrow, stake assets and help govern the network, allowing them to vote on assets to support or delist.

Cream Finance

Ethernity Chain

BarnBridge, founded in 2019, is a protocol for tokenizing risks. It was launched in September 2020. BarnBridge is a sort of decentralized finance (DeFi) lego for creating tradeable tokens that expose a consumer to market volatility. As of March 2021, the platform is still in an early stage of launch.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Quant.

BarnBridge is a project that expands the functionality of DeFi to make it more flexible and efficient. By tokenizing market fluctuations and exposure to risks, it can reduce volatility for conservative investors or increase it for daytraders. BarnBridge enables traditional risk management tools and fixed income instruments on the DeFi market. The main focus is dividing cryptocurrency risks into tranches so market participants, depending on their risk profile, can invest in different products or assets.

BarnBridge

Alpaca Finance

Secret (SCRT) is a privacy-oriented blockchain built on Cosmos. Its smart contracts are called Secret Contracts and allow DApps to use private data on Secret, similar to how smart contracts operate on other blockchains. However, Secret Contracts transfer encrypted inputs into encrypted outputs without exposing data. This is made possible thanks to the encrypted contract states during the execution.

Data privacy is guaranteed by combining encryption protocols and key management within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This allows Secret Contracts to compete for several privacy-related use cases that traditional blockchains have found difficult to accommodate. For instance, private voting mechanisms or credit scoring applications become possible since they do not expose sensitive user data on-chain with Secret.

Secret

MIR is the governance token of Mirror Protocol, a synthetic assets protocol built by Terraform Labs (TFL) on the Terra blockchain.

Mirror Protocol is decentralized from day 1, with the on-chain treasury and code changes governed by holders of the MIR token. TFL has no intention of keeping or selling MIR tokens, and there are no admin keys or special access privileges granted. The intent for this is to be a completely decentralized, community-driven project.

Mirrored assets are blockchain tokens that behave like "mirror" versions of real-world assets by reflecting the exchange prices on-chain. They give traders the price exposure to real assets while enabling fractional ownership, open access and censorship resistance as any other cryptocurrency. Unlike traditional tokens which serve to represent a real, underlying asset, mAssets are purely synthetic and only capture the price movement of the corresponding asset.

Mirrored assets provide the following advantages:

Global Accessibility: In most markets outside of Europe & North America, access to foreign equities and forex markets is highly limited. Crypto allows global accessibility without entry barriers.

Fractional Orders: In traditional finance, to execute a fractional order, multiple fractional orders are bundled together to execute a unitary transaction. The process of gathering all the orders into one requires additional waiting time. By utilizing the blockchain, orders volume is simply represented as a number on the blockchain, so there is no need for the intermediary bundling process.

Nearly-Instantaneous Order Execution: Oftentimes due to the lack of liquidity (price-time-priority order book algorithm), orders can take up to a day to fully execute. Given the fact that Mirror relies on liquidity provided by each individual asset pool, orders can be executed as fast as the blocktime of the network (~ 6 seconds).

Mirror Protocol

Keep3rV1 is a decentralized platform designed to facilitate the coordination between projects that need to source outside development operations and those who can provide those required services. Essentially, the project serves as a job board that facilitates the interaction between job posters, such as decentralized finance protocols, and job executors, known as Keepers. The tasks performed by Keepers range from submitting and calling transactions on-chain to completing complex operations off-chain. Keep3rV1 uses an ERC-20 token, KP3R, for governance and to provide rewards to Keepers.

The project was first announced on Oct. 22, 2020. It launched on the Ethereum mainnet in beta mode on Oct. 28, 2020.

Keep3rV1

Launched in 2020, Dego Finance is a decentralized ecosystem that offers a diverse combination of non-fungible token (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) tools. It is an independent, open NFT ecosystem.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Dego Finance.

Any user is allowed to launch an NFT and initiate mining, auctions and trading, covering the entire lifecycle of the product. Dego’s NFT protocol is a cross-chain, second-layer infrastructure for Blockchain projects that can be leveraged for user acquisition and token distribution.

Dego uses a modular combination design concept that combines various elements of a product to form subsystems with specific functions.

Dego Finance

DFI.MONEY, also known as YFII, is a fork of popular decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator platform yearn.finance (YFI).

Launched in July 2020, it aims to optimize returns for DeFi investors while adhering to changes proposed in an upgrade plan called YIP-8.

In addition to protocol changes, DFI.MONEY has also released new products, chief among which, the Vault, it describes as its “killer product.”

The native token of DFI.MONEY is YFII, a fixed-supply token which liquidity providers earn in accordance with their network interaction.

DFI.Money

Venus is an algorithmic money market and synthetic stablecoin protocol launched exclusively on Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

The protocol introduces a simple-to-use crypto asset lending and borrowing solution to the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, enabling users to directly borrow against collateral at high speed while losing less to transaction fees. In addition, Venus allows users to mint VAI stablecoins on-demand within seconds by posting at least 200% collateral to the Venus smart contract.

VAI tokens are synthetic BEP-20 token assets that are pegged to the value of one U.S. dollar (USD), whereas XVS tokens are also BEP-20-based, but are instead used for governance of the Venus protocol, and can be used to vote on adjustments—including adding new collateral types, changing parameters and organizing product improvements.

The governance of the protocol is entirely controlled by XVS community members, since the Venus founders, team members and other advisors do have any XVS token allocations.

Venus

Ethereum-based DYDX ($ethDYDX) is a governance token that allows the dYdX community to truly govern the dYdX Layer 2 Protocol built on Ethereum ("dYdX v3"). ethDYDX is currently undergoing a migration from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain. More information is available here. If you want to migrate ethDYDX to dYdX Chain DYDX, to enable staking, security and governance of the dYdX Chain you can follow the how-to-bridge guide here.

If you want to read about the new token utility for dYdX Chain DYDX you can read the blog here

ethDYDX (dYdX) is the governance token for the layer 2 protocol built on Ethereum. By enabling shared control of dYdX v3, ethDYDX allows traders, liquidity providers, and partners of dYdX to work collectively towards an enhanced dYdX v3.

Built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine, layer 2 is used for trading of cross-margined perpetuals on the platform. The scaling solution allows dYdX to increase transaction speed, eliminate gas costs, reduce trading fees and lower​​ minimum trade sizes on the protocol.

A total of 1,000,000,000 ethDYDX have been minted, and started to become accessible over five (5) years, on August 3rd, 2021, at 15:00:00 UTC.

dYdX (ethDYDX)

Litentry

Serum is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and ecosystem that brings unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance (DeFi). (DeFi).

Serum is the only high-performant DEX designed around a fully on-chain central limit order book and matching engine. Ecosystem partners can compose with Serum’s on-chain orderbook to share liquidity and power their trading features for institutional and retail users.

In light of the popularity of DeFi and the growth of DEXes on Ethereum, users and developers are limited by high gas costs and slow transactions. Serum aims to resolve these traditional problems of DeFi, as well as issues of centralization, low capital efficiency, and liquidity segmentation.

The SRM utility and governance token enables users to receive discounts on protocol fees and voting rights; 100% of exchange fees flow back to SRM via buy-and-burn, staking rewards, and ecosystem grants.

Serum

Kava Lend is a decentralized money market built on the Kava Platform that enables the lending and borrowing of cross-chain assets. Kava Lend supports supply-side deposits for BTC, XRP, BNB, BUSD, and USDX. The platform will allow overcollateralized borrowing for supported assets.

Kava Lend

Badger DAO is an open-source, decentralized automated organization that is dedicated to building products and infrastructure of simplifying the use of Bitcoin (BTC) as collateral across many smart contract platforms.

The platform is a shared space where the developers, known as Badge Builders, have the ability to collaborate and implement Bitcoin as collateral to as many blockchains as possible. A developer can earn a percentage of the fees and BADGER tokens from the developer mining pool for every implementation. The mainnet was launched on December 3, 2020.

A builder can be a single developer, a group of developers, or even a company. There are no fixed obligations to participation requirements, and anyone can create. The pillars of Badger DAO include the Badger Builders, the community-created products, the Dedicated Badger Operations team, the fairly initial distribution of the BADGER tokens for governance and the fact that all of the code is open-sourced.

Badger DAO

Radworks

SafePal is a cryptocurrency wallet launched in 2018 that helps users to protect and grow their digital assets. SafePal provides hardware and software wallets, all paired and managed through the SafePal App and was the first hardware wallet invested in and backed by Binance.

SafePal wallet supports numerous popular crypto-assets, in addition to popular tokens on the Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC)and TRON blockchains. Users can store, manage, swap, trade and grow their portfolio without compromising asset security, according to SafePal.

Since its launch in 2018, SafePal has grown exponentially and has over 3,000,000 users in 196 countries globally. More information can be found in the SafePal Official Website.

SafePal

Unifi Protocol DAO

Bella Protocol is a platform that provides a suite of DeFi products designed to make crypto banking simpler and more accessible. The protocol aims to create a better user experience by eliminating the high fee and slow transaction issues that can affect some blockchain platforms — while simultaneously improving the user experience through its simplified DeFi smart portal.

Bella's smart pool feature allows users to access the best yields available in the DeFi market, while benefiting from nearly zero gas fees — since these are directly subsidized by the platform.

The project launched in September 2020 as the first project distributed via Binance’s Launchpool platform, and has secured investments from several prominent firms, including Arrington XRP Capital and Ledger Capital.

The protocol was built by the ARPA team, a blockchain-based layer 2 solution for privacy-preserving computation. The BEL token is an essential component of the Bella Protocol ecosystem and serves as both a reward token that allows holders to participate in the governance of the platform.

BEL can be used to farm fee rewards from the network, get exclusive discounts on Bella protocol products (such as its robo-advisor tool), and for earning staking rewards.