Tornado Cash Migrates to MegaETH Testnet, Sparking Community Concerns

A developer known as Gunboats has ported the recently sanctions-free mixer Tornado Cash to the test network of the L2 project MegaETH. The new protocol version, dubbed ETHTornado, has raised concerns within the community.

*»I thought someone should try deploying [Tornado Cash] on the hottest [network] today. There’s no need to modify the code, and that’s actually a good thing. I assumed it was half a joke,»* the developer commented to The Block.

Gunboats explained that he used the outdated Truffle framework to port the code to MegaETH. He stated that the process was straightforward, highlighting the advancements in technology and tools for smart contracts in recent years: *»Nowadays, you can just use Foundry and write everything in Solidity.»*

Community members pointed out the risk of «dusting» attacks—where attackers send a tiny amount of tokens, known as «dust,» to a victim’s wallet. Often, the amount is insufficient to even cover transaction fees.

After sending the «dust,» attackers sometimes monitor the movements of the victim’s assets, anticipating that the owner will attempt to consolidate the received tokens with their own savings or transfer them to a centralized platform, thereby de-anonymizing the address.

In other instances, «dust» can consist of «malicious» tokens. When users attempt to sell such assets, they may find themselves redirected to phishing sites.

One user highlighted that assets funneled through Tornado Cash could be used to «tag» a large number of significant addresses in the DeFi ecosystem.

Certain services in the industry track tokens associated with mixers and exclude their owners from airdrop listings. The user argued that if most active market participants are «infected,» then special restrictions against Tornado assets would become meaningless.

Gunboats dismissed claims of heightened risks, stating, *»It doesn’t matter if you ‘dust’ people’s wallets every 10 milliseconds or every 12 seconds; in the end, you ‘get blacklisted.'»*

According to him, the MegaETH version of Tornado Cash is not seeing widespread use due to the lack of a user-friendly interface.

As a reminder, in March, Coinbase became the largest centralized operator of Ethereum nodes.