Uniswap, Tornado Cash, and the Curious Case of "Control"

Is there a difference between Uniswap and Tornado Cash?

• Both Tornado Cash and Uniswap are made up of immutable smart contracts and centralized user interfaces.
• Both create conditions under which the value of their platform’s tokens rises, thereby rewarding holders.
• Both services became the subject of lawsuits in the U.S., overseen by the same judge - Katherine Polk Failla.

The cases, however, were not alike: Tornado Cash was about money laundering, while Uniswap was about money grabbing (Pump & Dump fraud).

And do you know what difference the judge found between the two?
The Uniswap creators did not have sufficient control over their platform to stop alleged Pump & Dump schemes, but the Tornado Cash creators did have sufficient control to stop criminal activity.

Makes me wonder: what if the case was about how Uniswap lets users swap "tainted" crypto for "clean" crypto? Would the judge still decide Uniswap had no sufficient control?

And what if the situation were reversed - if the court considered how a user could send in "clean" crypto and receive "tainted" crypto instead? Would anyone even care about such risks to users?

We do.
At rabbit.io, we and our liquidity providers work hard to avoid dealing with tainted crypto - so we don't accidentally pass it on to our clients.