Vitalik has once again made a donation, this time giving 30 ETH to the “Free Alexey Roman” project on Juicebox. This marks Vitalik’s second donation to the project, as he previously donated 12.6 ETH on January 23rd.
“Alexey Roman” refers to Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm.
The last project that Vitalik contributed to was AssangeDAO, where he donated 10 ETH to support the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. With his donation to Alexey and Roman, Vitalik has now donated a total of 42.6 ETH, highlighting his concern for the Tornado Cash case.
Since its launch in 2019, Tornado Cash has faced several regulatory challenges due to allegations of money laundering. As the largest mixing service on the Ethereum network, Tornado Cash has always been a topic of discussion in the DeFi regulatory landscape. Following Roman Storm’s arrest last year, the sentencing of the other founders is still ongoing.
On May 14th, Alexey Pertsev was officially convicted and sentenced to 64 months in prison. The crypto community, especially the developer community, strongly protested Pertsev’s arrest, fearing that his charges could set a dangerous precedent for convicting software developers. In addition to Vitalik, Pertsev has received support through petitions, fundraising efforts by lawyers, and statements declaring his innocence from protocols that were hacked.
Roman Storm’s trial is scheduled for September, and the funds raised by “Free Alexey Roman” will be used to support their legal defense fund. The project has currently raised 589 ETH.
Juicebox, as an automated crowdfunding platform, can raise funds for any project on its platform. In a way, Juicebox can be seen as a “savior” for Alexey and Roman.
Most projects on Juicebox are presented in the form of DAOs. In mid-November 2021, a project called ConstitutionDAO gained popularity on Juicebox. At that time, the top auction house Sotheby’s was auctioning an official first edition print of the US Constitution, which is the only known copy held by a private collector. Sotheby’s valued it between $15 million and $20 million, and ConstitutionDAO was born to bid on it. In just 6 days, ConstitutionDAO successfully raised over 10,000 ETH, equivalent to $43 million.
The crowdfunding campaign received support from well-known institutions such as Gemini, Coinbase, and a16z. As participation in the Sotheby’s auction required fiat currency, FTX US President Brett Harrison expressed FTX’s willingness to provide cryptocurrency-to-fiat exchange services for ConstitutionDAO.
The ETH donated to ConstitutionDAO was converted into an equivalent number of PEOPLE tokens, and the hype around PEOPLE sparked the meme+DAO trend. People started looking for the next similar project, and FreeRossDAO emerged at the right time.
As the name suggests, FreeRossDAO aims to free Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the “Silk Road” dark web marketplace. On the “Silk Road,” users could anonymously purchase illegal items such as guns and drugs, as well as support Bitcoin transactions. At that time, Bitcoin had only been around for a year, and the “Silk Road” became the world’s first e-commerce platform to support Bitcoin transactions. It can be said that Ross played a significant role in promoting Bitcoin.
In 2013, Ross was arrested and convicted for conspiracy to commit money laundering, computer hacking, drug trafficking, and operating a criminal enterprise. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, plus an additional 40 years. Despite his status as a criminal, FreeRossDAO raised 2,836 ETH through Juicebox to acquire Ross’s NFT collection, the Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection.
FreeRossDAO promised ROSS tokens to donors, which were later renamed to FREE. The word “free,” with its meme-like quality, seemed to become a new narrative on Juicebox.
AssangeDAO, on the other hand, was created to “free Assange.” Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, faced 18 charges and was sentenced to 175 years in prison. AssangeDAO gained popularity during the Chinese New Year in 2022 and raised approximately 14,890 ETH in just a few days. The DAO aims to raise ETH to exchange for JUSTICE governance tokens and bid on a 1/1 NFT created in collaboration with digital artist Pak and Julian Assange.
From PEOPLE to FREE and now to JUSTICE, each donation is accompanied by the hype around a meme coin, and perhaps the ETH donated to support Alexey and Roman will bring about a new meme narrative.
It is worth noting that former US President Donald Trump has expressed the possibility of pardoning Ross and Assange if he is elected again. This statement has caused a rally in the FREE and JUSTICE tokens, bringing them back into the public eye. It remains to be seen how much impact this new donation DAO on Juicebox will have.
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