Right now, on day 11 of the Twister Money trial, Dr. Edman, co-founder and associate at Naxo, a digital forensics and investigations agency, took the stand for almost all of the trial day.
In his direct testimony, he outlined key crypto phrases for the court docket, defined the extent to which Twister Money was decentralized, highlighted the precautions Roman Storm and the opposite Twister Money co-founders took to forestall dangerous actors from utilizing the service, and known as into query the validity of the evaluation offered by two former witnesses.
Through the cross-examination, the prosecution prodded Dr. Edman to share particulars and to offer nuance concerning among the claims he made and the information he offered in his testimony.
Describing How Twister Money Works
In his slides, Dr. Edman described Twister Money as a noncustodial service that used immutable sensible contracts to anonymize transactions.
As he launched crypto-specific phrases and phrases which may have been unfamiliar to the jury reminiscent of “cryptographic signatures,” “sensible contracts,” and the aforementioned “immutable,” he outlined them in layperson’s phrases.
He was so thorough in doing in order that his efforts turned seemingly counterproductive in that he misplaced among the members of the jury within the course of.
That mentioned, he did make a lot of notable factors in his testimony, together with that the Twister Money pool contracts had been immutable since Could 18, 2020, that the Twister Money DAO performed a task in governing Twister Money (versus simply Storm and his co-founders), and {that a} “minified” (decreased) model of the supply Twister Money consumer interface (UI) supply code had existed on GitHub since practically the onset of the venture for the technically inclined to repeat and use as they happy.
Dr. Edman additionally famous that even the UI for Twister Money was decentralized in a way in that it existed on IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), a peer–to-peer storage system for sharing knowledge throughout distributed networks.
The Precautions The Twister Money Builders Took
Dr. Edman highlighted the truth that Storm and his co-founders utilized a geoblocking system to the UI, making it harder for individuals or entities from sure areas of the globe, like North Korea or Cuba, to make use of the UI.
He additionally famous that the Twister Money builders carried out the Chainalysis Sanctions Oracle — a wise contract that features a checklist of sanctioned addresses — inside a month of Chainalysis’ creating the instrument.
Criticizing The Testimony of Two Different Witnesses
Dr. Edman acknowledged that he’d reviewed the information that FBI Particular Agent DeCapua offered final week, whereas mentioning that the wallets related to the Ronin hack didn’t transfer funds via Twister Money. He mentioned that there have been a lot of hops from the Ronin hack pockets to Twister Money, making the evaluation tougher to validate.
He added that from September 1, 2020 to August 8, 2022, 85% of funds that moved via Twister Money had been “unidentified” whereas solely 13% had been from hacks from DeCapua’s demonstrations, making the purpose that almost all of Twister Money customers weren’t essentially criminals.
Dr. Edman additionally critiqued the testimony from Philip Werlau, a blockchain auditor from AnChain.AI and a witness for the prosecution.
Dr. Edman was notably important of Mr. Werlau’s distinctive “fuel ratio evaluation,” which tracked crypto deposits into Twister Money. He acknowledged that he doesn’t know of this technique’s recognized error charges and that neither did Mr. Werlau. (He mentioned as a lot in his testimony.)
Cross-Inspecting Dr. Edman
Towards the start Dr. Edman’s cross-examination, the prosecution harped on the truth that, from December 2020 till August 8, 2022, nearly all the funds that moved via Twister Money had been put via a router that Storm and his co-founders had arrange.
The prosecution confirmed a slide illustrating Twister Money’s 7,764 deposits and seven,322 withdrawals for the 100 ETH Twister Money pool by way of the router in February 2022, a month by which no funds had been processed via mentioned pool immediately.
Whereas Dr. Edman largely agreed with this being the case, he didn’t assist the prosecution’s declare that the criminals had been transferring illicit funds via the router as a result of doing so helped them to extend their anonymity. (The prosecution argued that the criminals’ placing the funds via the identical entry level as all the different customers helped to make the transactions not stand out.)
Additionally in the course of the cross-examination, the prosecution acknowledged that the house owners of the Twister Money group’s GitHub account (Storm and his two co-founders) made the ultimate selections concerning what was included within the UI they usually added that the supply code for the UI wasn’t as open supply as Dr. Edman claimed it was throughout his testimony.
To the latter level, the prosecution argued that solely offering the minified supply code wasn’t the identical as offering the complete supply code.
Dr. Edman was reluctant to agree with this evaluation, and settled by stating that underneath the strict definition of open supply the prosecution supplied, the Twister Money UI wasn’t technically absolutely open supply from the onset.
The prosecution additionally requested Dr. Edman whether or not Storm and the opposite Twister Money builders truly integrated the geoblocking code.
They confirmed a commit for the code that Dr. Edman had included in his slides, and pressured Dr. Edman to share whether or not or not he knew for certain the code was merged. Dr. Edman mentioned that it was to the most effective of his data.
A Second Witness Takes The Stand
With roughly 10 minutes left within the trial day, the protection known as their second witness of the day, Tyler Alameida, to the stand.
Mr. Alameida works in cybersecurity at Coinbase and testified to the truth that he as soon as used Twister Money to protect his privateness as he despatched funds from his pockets to the Ukrainian battle fund.
Whereas Choose Failla hadn’t allowed a lot house for the witnesses to speak in regards to the privateness use case for Twister Money, she did allow Mr. Alameida to inform his story throughout the simply over 5 minutes he was on the stand.
What’s Subsequent?
The protection will name extra witnesses to the stand tomorrow, one in every of which can be a custodian for Chainalysis.
After that the protection has acknowledged that it plans to carry roughly 4 extra witnesses to the stand, together with probably Roman Storm himself.
