Tornado Cash’s hacker offers to give back control of the project to the community
Amid this news, the rate of the TORN token temporarily jumped by 10% but then dropped again
22.05.2023 - 07:35
501
2 min
0
The Tornado Cash token (TORN) is up 10% after a proposal submitted by a wallet address linked to a recent attack on the decentralized autonomous organization’s (DAO) governance state looks to reverse the malicious changes.
“The attacker posted a new proposal to restore the state of governance," user Tornadosaurus-Hex wrote in the Tornado Cash community forum, adding that there is a "good chance" that the attacker would execute it.
Tornadosaurus-Hex said that the attacker is reverting the TORN tokens they gave themself – which gave them a controlling share of the governance votes – back to zero.
Given the attacker's holdings of TORN governance tokens, the proposal looks as though it will pass when voting closes on May 26, though it's unclear when the action will be executed. When the proposal passes, the malicious code that the attacker integrated into the protocol, which allowed them to steal voting power from others, will be removed, and the governance of Tornado Cash's DAO will go back to token holders.
As a result, TORN was up as much as 10%, according to CoinGecko data, before settling back down.
0xdeadf4ce, an active member of the TORN community, pointed out that this might all be a “gigatroll” to depress the price of the token to increase their holdings at a discount.
“We don’t even have a choice in regards to this proposal, but it is still important nonetheless,” Tornadosaurus-Hex added.
Structural attacks on DAOs and DeFi protocols, which differ from hacks where the attacker breaks code instead of exploiting it, have resulted in charges, but the attacker behind this exploit is likely counting on the fact that Tornado Cash was recently designated as a sanctioned entity.
This material is taken from the website https://www.coindesk.com.
Useful material?
Incidents
Developers warned of potential risks to bridges across the ecosystem and asked exchanges for assistance.
Jun 22, 2026
Incidents
The defendant helped move funds stolen through investment scams and earned at least $4 million for his role in the operation.
Jun 10, 2026
Incidents
The company is linking the incident to a compromised private key on a service wallet, rather than a smart contract exploit
May 22, 2026
Incidents
Following the incident, the project temporarily halted trading operations and node activity.
May 15, 2026
Incidents
The user spent weeks unsuccessfully trying to guess the password until Claude helped find an old wallet backup file
May 14, 2026
Crypto regulations
Authorities are introducing mandatory registration for companies handling cross-border crypto transactions
May 8, 2026
Telegram
Twitter