Overview

In this dashboard, I will answer this question from Flipside Crypto:

• What is Tornado Cash and why would it be targeted by the US government? Why might an address interact with the service?

• The addresses tied to the service have been publicly posted online. Using those addresses answer the following:

• How many addresses are still using the service despite the sanctions?

• Which addresses have been interacting the most with Tornado Cash?

• Break the addresses down by frequency and volume of tokens and describe how the groups are using the service differently.

• Is there anything else interesting about its users?

What Is Tornado Cash?

Tornado Cash is a decentralized, non-custodial privacy solution built on Ethereum. It improves transaction privacy by breaking the on-chain link between recipient and destination addresses. Tornado Cash uses a smart contract that accepts ETH and ERC-20 deposits. These deposits can be withdrawn by any on-chain address. Whenever an asset is withdrawn by the new address, there is no way to link the withdrawal to the deposit, ensuring asset privacy.

Tornado Cash uses zero knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to achieve privacy. When a user decides to make a withdrawal, the user must provide proof that he or she possesses a secret corresponding to one of the smart contract’s list of deposits. zk-SNARK technology allows this proof to be verified without the user needing to reveal which exact deposit corresponds to their secret. The smart contract then checks the proof, and transfers deposited funds to the address specified by the withdrawal transaction. Any external observer is unable to determine which deposit this withdrawal is linked to.

Conclusion

• Tornado Cash experienced nearby 300 unique users after sanctions.
• After sanctions number Tornado Cash transactions had downward trend and fall from 971 into below 160.
• This users (0x12d92fed171f16b3a05acb1542b40648e7ced384) had most interaction with Tornado Cash before and after sanctions also this user had 164 transactions after sanctions.
• This users (0xd36c987e03b712fe2f9a24d2c07064d9035c302b) had most amount Stable Coin transfer with nearby 2.3M.
• Tornado Cash’s User nearby each 165s do a transaction on this platform.
• After sanctions Withdrawal had most number of transactions with nearby 1.6K and had 67% proportion of all transactions after sanctions.
• it seems sanctions had negative effect on Tornado Cash and it’s cause fall price of Tornado Cash token from near $30 on 7 Aug into $15 on 12 Aug.