Tornado Cash

Tornado Cash uses zero knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to achieve privacy. When a user decides to make a withdrawal, the user must provide proof that he or she possesses a secret corresponding to one of the smart contract’s list of deposits. zk-SNARK technology allows this proof to be verified without the user needing to reveal which exact deposit corresponds to their secret. The smart contract then checks the proof, and transfers deposited funds to the address specified by the withdrawal transaction. Any external observer is unable to determine which deposit this withdrawal is linked to. TORN is Tornado Cash’s native governance token. It’s a fixed-supply ERC-20 token that is used for voting on protocol upgrades and fixes.

Tornado improves transaction privacy by breaking the on-chain link between recipient and destination addresses. It uses a smart contract that accepts ETH deposits that can be withdrawn by a different address. Whenever ETH is withdrawn by the new address, there is no way to link the withdrawal to the deposit, ensuring complete privacy.

In this way, Tornado.cash acts as a proxy to ensure that the transaction is 100% anonymous with zkSnarks proofs.