The Solana Policy Institute, an advocacy and lobbying arm for the Solana blockchain ecosystem, said it has donated $500,000 to fund the legal appeals of Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, the software developers behind the Ethereum-based coin-mixing service Tornado Cash. Storm was convicted earlier this month in Manhattan of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, while Pertsev received a prison sentence of more than five years from a Dutch court last year for money-laundering offenses. Both developers are contesting the rulings, arguing that they merely wrote open-source code and did not control the platform’s use. The institute said the prosecutions set a "chilling precedent" for software developers and that supporting the appeals is essential to clarify the legal boundaries for creating decentralized privacy tools. The donation also signals cross-chain solidarity, as Solana community members back developers whose project runs on the rival Ethereum network.