The DeFi Education Fund, a research and advocacy organization, has petitioned the Trump administration to intervene in the prosecution of Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash co-founder facing criminal charges.
According to an April 28 letter directed to White House crypto czar David Sacks, the group urged President Trump to “take immediate action to discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.”
They argued that Storm’s case is part of a broader overreach that “threatens the very foundation of technological innovation” in the United States.
Storm, whom the U.S. Department of Justice charged in August 2023, has been accused of helping launder over $1 billion through Tornado Cash, a popular crypto mixing service.
He faces charges of conspiracy to facilitate money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter, and violating U.S. sanctions, offenses that could carry a combined sentence of up to 45 years if convicted.
As previously reported by crypto.news, last year Storm filed a motion to dismiss all charges, arguing that Tornado Cash was an immutable, open-source protocol beyond his control.
However, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla denied the motion in September 2024, ruling that the indictment met the legal threshold to proceed to trial. A subsequent bid for reconsideration was also rejected in February 2025.
In their letter, the DeFi Education Fund argued that the Department of Justice is pushing an “unprecedented theory” by attempting to hold developers liable for how others use their code, even when they have “no control over those third parties or user assets.”
They warned that if left unchecked, this legal approach “freezes” open-source development altogether.
The group also pointed out that Storm’s prosecution appears to contradict earlier Treasury Department guidance issued during Trump’s first term, which clarified that developers of self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols are not considered money transmitters under federal law.
“We in the blockchain industry have relied on that guidance in good faith since 2019,” the letter stated.
Further, the letter warned that beyond Storm’s individual case, the DOJ’s actions create a legal environment that “empowers politically-motivated enforcement” and puts every open-source developer at risk, regardless of industry.
“No one writing code in good faith should have to fear prosecution for the actions of strangers,” the letter said, arguing that innovation in fields like financial technology, artificial intelligence, and even healthcare could be stifled if developers are held liable for how their tools are used.
Achieving the goal of making America the “crypto capital of the planet,” they said, requires protecting the very builders who create the underlying technology.
“We ask President Trump to protect American software developers, restore legal clarity, and end this unlawful DOJ overreach,” the group wrote, adding that the stakes “could not be higher” for the future of crypto innovation in the U.S.
Meanwhile, support for the petition is growing, with more than 253 signatures as of press time from various industry leaders, including Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, and Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams.
