A blockchain privacy researcher known as Fede\u2019s intern said he was detained in Turkey, where he is being accused of \u201chelping others misuse Ethereum.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Aug. 10, Ethereum<\/a> privacy researcher Federico Carrone was detained in Izmir, Turkey, and held for about 24 hours, according to his own reports on X. Carrone, known as \u201cFede\u2019s intern\u201d on X, said he was released yesterday and that he had been detained over alleged links to a privacy protocol and a January 2022 crypto mixer research paper. <\/p>\n In an X post<\/a> on Aug. 11, Carrone explained that he landed in Izmir in part to work on a \u201cDeFi project,\u201d but was detained at passport control and told he couldn\u2019t enter the country. Per his reports, local police cited a pending legal case requiring him to appear before a judge.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a few hours, the attorney reached me and explained that the Minister of Internal Affairs had filed a case accusing me of helping others misuse Ethereum, allegedly in connection with a privacy protocol,\u201d Carrone wrote on X.<\/p>\n Following his release, Carrone said<\/a> that he had decided to donate $500,000 to Roman Storm\u2019s legal defense \u2014 increasing what he said was an earmarked $50,000 from his venture studio LambdaClass \u2014 saying \u201cbuilders everywhere need to know they can push innovation forward and that the community will stand behind them when they do.\u201d <\/p>\n Last week, the Ethereum Foundation said<\/a> that it would match up to $500,000 in further donations to Storm\u2019s defense, posting from its official X account: \u201cPrivacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the blockchain developer, the incident might be linked to Tutela, a January 2022 academic research<\/a> paper, co-authored by Carrone and eleven other researchers, that examines privacy weaknesses in Ethereum mixers like Tornado Cash<\/a> by showing how users could be deanonymized.<\/p>\nResearch Paper<\/h2>\n