Some Twitter users vented their dismay at the ongoing attack on privacy that followed the U.S. Treasury Dept. action against Tornado Cash.
FTX is reported to have begun blocking accounts who sent money through zk.money (a private layer-2 network provided by Aztec Network on Ethereum). Twitter users claim that FTX identified the DApp to be a mixer, a service it considers a high-risk activity and has banned.
On Thursday, reports of blocked transactions on FTX started appearing on Twitter. Sometimes they were accompanied by commentary about FTX’s motives and claims that zk.money does not mix.
Twitter users noted that the blocking of transactions linked to the protocol could indicate a ban with wide-reaching consequences similar to those imposed by US Treasury Department on Tornado Cash users. On Aug. 8, the U.S. agency listed more than 40 USDC and ETH addresses to the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC), List of Specially Designated Nationals.
Zac Williamson, Aztec Network CEO, posted a lengthy thread on Twitter Monday discussing the situation around Tornado Cash. This was days before FTX’s apparent actions against the network. Web3 has a place for regulation. It’s not at the network-level. Williamson added that it is at the application-level.”
“The sad thing is that this has already happened with the World Wide Web. We don’t arrest internet service provider for data in their cables. We don’t arrest DNS providers who sign illegal traffic.
Zk.money launched March 20, 2021. It refers to as the “private DeFi yield aggregater” for the Aztec Network’s AztecConnect software development kit. Aztec Connect is, in turn, ” works as a VPN: using Aztec’s rollup contract to proxy.” The Aztec Network announced on Thursday that Aztec Connect was preparing to receive funding through DEX Balancer Labs.