Tor Project hopes to raise $75,000 through crowdfunding campaign

The Tor Project has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the maintenance of the browser. The makers hope to raise $75,000 to fix bugs and maintain the platform.

The creators behind the Anomization Browser have the annual Bug Smash Fund set up again. That is an annual crowdfunding campaign in which the makers collect money to free up time for bug fixes. In addition to bugs in the browser software, maintenance must also be carried out on the network, errors are resolved on the metrics page and documentation are updated. The makers do not mention a target of the number of bugs to be fixed or which of them have priority. They say they are aiming for $ 75,000 in donations, about 73,000 euros. Many volunteers work at the Tor Project, but also some permanent employees. When the corona crisis erupted, the foundation had to fire a third of those employees because the number of donations declined.

The founders of the browser say they have worked on Connection Assist this year, a function to make it easier to switch nodes that are blocked by censorship. There is also better support via Telegram, among others. The browser has also been made more stable and is better protected against denial-of-service attacks and network congestion. These developments mean that ‘more maintenance will be required in the future’.

Last year, the Tor Project also set up a Bug Smash Fund crowdfunding. Then the foundation raised $107,000, with an average of $60 per donation. 241 bugs were then repaired, also in various areas in the software and in the network.