The Ethereum researcher has been released after serving part of his sentence for violating sanctions against North Korea.
On April 9, Virgil Griffith, a former developer for the Ethereum Foundation, was released on supervised release. According to crypto developer Brantly Millegan, Griffith will remain in a halfway house for several weeks while awaiting the next steps in his parole process.
Griffith was sentenced to 63 months in a U.S. prison after prosecutors accused him of violating international sanctions laws. The charges stemmed from a presentation titled “Blockchains for Peace” that Griffith gave in North Korea. According to prosecutors, during the event he allegedly provided “technical advice on using cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to evade sanctions.”
The researcher pleaded guilty to the violations in 2021. In July 2024, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel later reduced his sentence to 56 months.
Griffith joined the Ethereum Foundation around 2016 and became known for his work on the Ethereum Name Service and other protocol-level improvements. He holds a PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from the California Institute of Technology and previously created WikiScanner, a tool to trace anonymous Wikipedia edits. He also collaborated with cryptographer Aaron Swartz to develop Tor2web, a service that allows users to access Tor network websites through regular web browsers.
