GM @Polkadot Fam 🫶
Last week I had the pleasure to represent @PolkadotCzechia and @Bohemiafam at ETHPrague.
We had a booth, panel and an epic side event.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this a reality. We are just getting started!
Next meetup 26/6 6pm Vila Štvanice
🔗👇
GM @PolkadotCzechia 🫶
Před týdnem jsme měli možnost @Polkadot na ETHPrague, kde jeden z našich členů zorganizoval panel zaměřený na DAO a zorganizovali jsme již 3. Bohemia Roots meetup zaměřený na problematiku DAO a budování komunit.
Díky @lveecze za super video 🔗👇
There is a lot of complaints you might have against @paritytech and how they approach their role within the @Polkadot ecosystem.
But you really take away from them that their engineering proves is on another level.
In my eyes they are just the technical providers and enablers, but we need other entities such as the PCF to take charge and ownership over how the infrastructure is being used. Otherwise Parity would be just another Google or Meta.
Community leadership is the toughest nut to crack, but it is worth it.
Be honest. Have you tried to use your own agency and take charge of what the DOTDAO should do next or do you just complain about others?
Hyperbridge is now live on @Polkadot Hub mainnet.
Developers can now connect Polkadot Hub to 14+ major blockchain networks through cryptographically secure bridging, with support for cross-chain messaging, verified state queries, and asset transfers.
@validvent Great. Recommend reaching out to @VyaraSavova and the European Ethereum Institute as they aim to better align crypto industry stakeholders to provide a united front. We might participate with @Trezor too.
Living in Europe and need to move your crypto off Binance?
Don't just move to another exchange. Choose self-custody.
Your assets should be under your control, not someone else's.
Get 10% off this week with code TAKECONTROL.
https://t.co/5BlL5YDwye
🌪️⚖️🛡️ ——————————————— 🛡️⚖️🌪️
🙏 I'm Roman Storm. To @ethereum, and to everyone who has stood with me through this - thank you. Truly.
When you're a developer facing decades in prison for writing open-source code, the nights get very long. And then this community shows up. Again and again. And I remember I'm not alone. That's everything. 💚
Let me be clear about what this case actually is. I didn't rob anyone. I didn't steal, didn't touch a single user's funds, never took custody of a single coin. I wrote software. Privacy software - the kind of thing that, in any sane world, belongs on a résumé. Not in an indictment. 🧑💻
So I want to tell you why, even now, I have every reason to keep fighting. Because this isn't blind hope. The courts have already started to speak - and what they said has a name. Van Loon. 📜
In November 2024, a federal appeals court - the Fifth Circuit - looked at what the government did to Tornado Cash and said it plainly: government broke the law. OFAC overstepped its authority when it sanctioned the protocol. Those immutable smart contracts aren't "property" that belongs to anyone. ⚖️
Sit with the court's own words, because they're extraordinary. The judges described Tornado Cash's contracts as "unownable, uncontrollable, and unchangeable — even by [their] creators." 🤯
Uncontrollable. Even by their creators. A federal court, after studying the actual technology, found that I literally cannot control the code I helped write. It runs on its own. It always will. No one can stop it - not me, not OFAC, not anyone. That's not a loophole. That's just how it works.
And the government's own position has since crumbled. After Van Loon, OFAC removed Tornado Cash from the sanctions list entirely in March 2025. The protocol they once branded a national-security threat - delisted, out in the open. ❌
And yet they're still prosecuting me. So look closely at what they're actually holding against me - because the harder you look, the thinner it gets. 🔍
My team integrated Chainalysis's official OFAC sanctions screening directly into the Tornado Cash interface - a real-time compliance measure to block sanctioned addresses. The government's response to that? They called it "window dressing." Compliance, dismissed as decoration. 🙃
Then there are my own words, from my own chats, reacting to hackers getting traced: "I'm glad those fuckers are detected." That's the person they're branding a criminal conspirator. The story and the evidence don't match - because the story isn't true. 💔
And once you start looking, the pattern is everywhere. A court says the protocol is uncontrollable even by its creator - yet they want to jail me for "controlling" it. That's the kind of case this is. It gets worse. ⬇️
The indictment's most-quoted line - a dramatic "how do you go about laundering $600 million?" - was pitched as a co-founder's words. It wasn't. It was written by a CoinDesk reporter asking the team how mixers work. A forwarded message got mislabeled in the data extraction. A journalist's question became Exhibit A. 📰
Then the most damning of all: on the very day I was indicted, FinCEN officials privately told these SDNY prosecutors that non-custodial tools like this are NOT money services businesses. The prosecutors walked into court and argued the opposite. My defense didn't learn about it for ~21 months. ⚖️
Even the DOJ doesn't seem to believe its own theory. Weeks before insisting I'm guilty, the same DOJ told the Supreme Court - in its amicus brief in Cox Communications v. Sony Music — that "knowledge that a buyer plans to misuse a product with substantial legitimate uses, without more, does not support an inference of culpable intent." The exact opposite of what they argue against me. Same DOJ. Weeks apart. 🔁
https://t.co/cRoJAQZwB8
So step back. If you only hear "crypto mixer," you might assume the worst. But this is not a shadowy contraption. It's mainstream, studied, respected technology. 🎓
Stanford teaches Tornado Cash — not as a cautionary tale, but as the textbook example of how cryptographic privacy works. It's a final-exam question in CS251, Dan Boneh's renowned cryptography course. 📚
https://t.co/2A77txqf4g
https://t.co/65jdsOEtuw
And Stanford's own exam notes something the prosecutors won't: Tornado Cash ships a built-in compliance tool, letting a user voluntarily prove which deposit was theirs to satisfy an exchange like Coinbase. Privacy and compliance, designed to coexist. 🔎
This isn't fringe, either. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a primer on Tornado Cash for economists and policymakers - treating it as legitimate financial-privacy infrastructure, and describing that very same compliance tool. 🏦
https://t.co/d6orD3ydQT
ers
So add it all up. Technology taught at Stanford. Analyzed by the Federal Reserve. Vindicated in a federal court of appeals. Built with real-time sanctions screening the government waved off as "window dressing." And the developer who helped build it - me, is facing prison. Tell me that sits right. 😞
This is why it reaches so far beyond me. If publishing neutral, open code makes you a criminal for whatever a stranger later does with it, every developer here is exposed. Every wallet team. Every protocol. Everyone who's ever pushed to a public repo. 🧨
Privacy is not a crime. Open source is not a conspiracy. Writing software is not the same as committing the acts of those who misuse it. The easiest principles in the world to defend - which is exactly why we can't afford to lose them here. 🛡️
Van Loon is the law catching up to the truth. Now I deserve the same justice the protocol already received. We're close. The arguments are strong. And with you behind me, we can finish this. 💪
So please — follow my co-founder in this fight @alex_pertsev, and share our stories. And if you're able, support my legal defense at 👉 https://t.co/lx9E4ILDrn 💚 Every voice, every dollar, every repost tells a court — and tells me — that I don't stand alone.
I'm Roman Storm. We started this together. Let's end it together. 🌪️
🌪️⚖️🛡️ ——————————————— 🛡️⚖️🌪️
The journey is just beginning. Self-custody is one thing, the other is technical providers helping users to keep self-custody while making the UX feel like custodial solutions.
Currently under MiCA it is not clear enough that the TP do not fall within the scope. Let's work on changing that by providing clear guidelines that will protect users and limit liability for such providers.
Depending on how $JAMKB is designed, it does not have to weaken $DOT. If $JAMKB represents scarce JAM state capacity and the DOT DAO controls its release, it could actually become a mechanism that strengthens DOT economics.
JAM is novel technology, and a new use case that unlocks real-world demand should be welcomed. If $JAMKB is accepted, the DOT DAO and $DOT holders should have a clear stake, and the $DOT token should directly benefit from the design. I’m confident W3F can formulate tokenomics to maximize this opportunity.
Some possible designs that would benefit DOT: 👇
#Polkadot
@GregusJakub@hydration_net Vibecoding suggestion on top of Hydration. Create a Hydra (hear Hydration native chatbot) that will be helping people navigate the different strategies on Hydration! :D
Believe me or not, but I am excited about our next (technical) steps and esp. integration of ZisK almost as much as when we set our roadmap 5y-6y ago. Not just bc its bleeding edge, but it WORKS TODAY. When we tried it, it felt like magic. Ofc it needs to be more battle tested. But there is finally real solution for SYNCHRONOUS composability between Ethereum mainnet, rollups and maybe even other chains which will be huge liquidity unlock for us. Then I will unleash my autistic passion and creativity for DeFi at even bigger scale :)
Once again, @hydration_net will be able to tap into liquidity sitting in Aave, Uniswap and other big protocols on mainnet and maybe across other chains.
Near intents are finally at stage of internal testing. GIGAHDX finally going live. 1 unannounced product which will be heads down best crypto savings product coming shorly after. More scalable & robust rwa sources of yield in the works.
Team is leaner, more accountable and even more committed, efficient and working harder.
Same as with relationships, love, job, whatever, you can’t feel maximum amount of excitement everyday in year 5-6. On the other hand it never felt more “real” or aged. Similar to fine wine, year 5 is when its just getting serious and interesting.
Thanks for your patience in the process of aging of @hydration_net 🫡
PS: Ofc it could be written in more hypey way and promise you world peace and solving world hunger. We wanted to give you a small, short update which would not put you in sleep and prove you we are not just kicking the can down the road.
@VCosta7989126@Polkadot@Web3foundation@paritytech There is a difference as the JAMKB for bandwith cannot be consumed, they are permanent tokens. So you could burn DOT monthly for example, but you cannot just simply by it. We need to come up with a system that will accrue value to the DOT token that is for sure.
Hard to read, but true. It can be turned around, but it won't be easy. The right steps are being taken, but only time will tell, if they'll be sucessful.
Is DOT dead?
Honestly, nobody can say that yet.
But it is unmistakably agonizing and the people who could revive it aren't giving the people who own it anything tangible to hold.
Let me lay it out, fairly, because I still want this idea to win.