The Tor Project, which is looking to decrease its reliance on United States government grants, has raised a total of $205,874 from its first ever crowdfunding campaign.
The amount was raised from 5,265 donors over a period of six weeks, which was a sigh of relief for Tor as it stated that it was not sure if people who use the service would actually make investments into it.
The Tor Project, which utilizes anonymous and volunteer-based servers to be able to provide users with a more secure online experience, launched its first crowdfunding campaign in November in a bid for diversification of its funding sources. Tor believed that a crowdfunding campaign provides flexibility for it to be able to do what it believes is important, when the time is right. With the campaign, Tor was looking to fund the development of new and powerful privacy tools, to invest money into making the current tools more resilient or stronger, to put up a funded help desk, or to create an Arabic version of its website.
The anonymity network has always said that it is open to donations, but the crowdfunding campaign was a more publicized initiative that focused on the most prominent users of the service, including infamous NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Tor recently revealed its annual revenue of $2.5 million in 2014, with most of the funding coming from the government. In filings, Tor said that federal grants made up 75 percent of its revenue for 2014, which is already lower compared to the previous year when 90 percent of Tor's revenue came from government grants.
While Tor will likely and significantly rely on government grants for funding for some time, the crowdfunding initiative and the increased visibility of Tor will somewhat offset the percentage of its revenue coming from grants and provide it with additional resources for its projects.
There has been tension brewing between Tor and the authorities, however, despite Tor being initially developed as a project by the U.S. Navy and first to receive funding from DARPA. A November report said that Tor believes the FBI, in connivance with Carnegie Mellon University researchers, compromised the network, with the researchers receiving $1 million as payment for their efforts.
