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Tor Project's first crowdfunding round raises over $200K, proving small donors can back internet freedom

Tor Project's first quadratic funding campaign raised over $200,000 from small donors, distributing funds to privacy tools after 2025 US funding collapse.

AI News Feed · 2026-08-21 17:28

The campaign attracted 580 unique donors who made 662 contributions, with an average donation of just $41. Direct community donations totaled roughly $27,000, which was added to a matching pool funded by Cake Wallet, the Ethereum Foundation, Logos, Octant, Xeovo, and Zcash Community Grants. The campaign used quadratic funding, a model that rewards breadth of support rather than the size of any single donation, meaning community donations determined how the matching funds were allocated.

The timing was not accidental. US funding for global internet freedom was "effectively gutted" in 2025, with many programs cut permanently and the main granting office issuing no money that year. The Open Technology Fund, a long-standing backer of tools like Tor and Signal, had its congressionally authorized grant terminated and went to court to try to save it. The Tor Project framed this as a structural problem, noting that over-reliance on a single funder can put essential work at risk, especially as 2025 became the worst year on record for internet shutdowns.

Ten projects shared the pot, spanning censorship circumvention, secure messaging, and secure journalism. Onion Browser, which brings Tor access to iOS, received the largest allocation at around $111,000, followed by Unredacted, the non-profit behind the free, censorship-resistant FreeSocks VPN, with roughly $41,000. Other familiar names like SecureDrop, OnionShare, OONI, and Ricochet Refresh each received a guaranteed minimum.

The Tor Project was candid that the model is "promising, but operationally complex," with 15% of funds going to campaign administration. Better-known projects had an advantage, but smaller grantees reported gaining new visibility, followers, and first-time discovery as a valuable side effect. The round has now closed, but the team said it is already exploring what future matching pools could look like.