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Privacy Protocols: Railgun vs Tornado Cash
Revenue comparison of Ethereum's two largest privacy protocols. Railgun ($79.5M TVL, ~$295K in 30d revenue) leads Tornado Cash ($489.6M TVL, but $0 revenue captured to protocol per current tracking, ~$324K in 30d fees) in structured revenue capture. Tornado Cash still commands the larger anonymity pool and remains the top mixer on Ethereum-based networks post-2025 OFAC sanction relief, but stablecoin/user migration during the sanctions era (2022-2025) shifted flow share toward Railgun and zkBOB — a shift that has largely stuck even after sanctions lifted in March 2025.
Context: Regulatory Backdrop & Category Landscape
Tornado Cash was OFAC-sanctioned in Aug 2022, dropping its mixer share to ~16%, then sanctions were lifted in March 2025 and it recovered to over 40% of quarterly mixer share by Q4 2025 before settling near ~20% in 2026 YTD (per TRM Labs, unverified). Despite recovering activity, its stablecoin flows never returned to pre-sanction levels — Railgun and zkBOB retained users who migrated during the ban (per AMLBot analysis, unverified). Railgun has become the most stablecoin-diverse privacy protocol, processing USDT/USDC/DAI across $1.58B cumulative volume, while Tornado Cash remains almost exclusively DAI-denominated.