The ruling comes down to the definition of "property", and the court finds that Tornado Cash's immutable smart contracts aren't property. Treasury can only sanction property under the law. Tornado is a tool that nobody controls, and which OFAC cannot sanction.

> Indeed, when someone has a property interest, he or she typically has the “rights of possession and control.” And “one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property” is “the right to exclude others.”

> The immutable smart contracts at issue in this appeal are not property because they are not capable of being owned. More than one thousand volunteers participated in a “trusted setup ceremony” to “irrevocably remov[e] the option for anyone to update, remove, or otherwise control those lines of code.” And as a result, no one can “exclude” anyone from using the Tornado Cash pool smart contracts.

Immutability is what makes this whole thing work for Tornado. The ruling is basically a whole explanation of why an immutable smart contract isn't property, isn't a service, isn't a patent, it isn't anything Treasury can touch. In fact, it's not even a "contract" (no counterparty).

But the mutable aspect of Tornado -- the optional gas fee anonymization middlemen, who are registered via a mutable smart contract -- they're still in the rough. Which makes the rally in the TORN coin those middlemen get paid in all the weirder.

It seems pretty clear to me that Treasury can sanction all of those Tornado relayers, because relayers have control over their actions; their participation happens through a mutable smart contract, and they can stop at any time.