About the campaign
As of 2025, internet freedom has declined for 15 consecutive years.
And yet as censorship and surveillance become increasingly sophisticated and pervasive, many of the tools that millions of people rely on to protect themselves from these harms are experiencing financial pressure and funding cuts.
In the face of this crisis, the Tor Project and Funding the Commons have launched this crowdfunding campaign as an experiment in finding an alternative: a community-driven, cryptocurrency-native fundraising event designed to fund internet freedom more sustainably, transparently, and collectively when traditional methods fail.
How the campaign works
You choose a project (or projects!), and send a donation to them in the currency of your choice. Choose the projects that matter the most to you, because your contribution helps dictate how match funding is distributed.
When the campaign ends, a method of distributing match funding called quadratic funding will consider the number of supporters, not just the amount donated, to reward communities with broad support with match funding.
Based on the quadratic funding outcome, a percentage of match funding will be allocated to each organization. At the launch of the campaign, $115,000 USD in matching funds are available, contributed by Cake Wallet, Zcash Community Grants, Logos, and Octant. More organizations and individuals may contribute to this pool throughout the duration of the campaign.
15% of total donations raised will be allocated to support the Tor Project and Funding the Commons in order to help us cover the staff and infrastructure used to build and execute this campaign.
Why contribute?
Your donations to the 10 different projects highlighted in this campaign will support secure journalism, private communications, anti-censorship technologies, and privacy-preserving infrastructure used by millions of people worldwide.
Internet freedom isn’t just Tor, or one protocol, or one messaging app. It’s an interconnected network of tools, people, and movements that refuse to accept surveillance and censorship on the internet as inevitable.
We have to work together to keep the internet free.
FAQ
What is quadratic funding?
Quadratic funding is a way to distribute funds that prioritizes how many people support a project, not just how much money it receives. In practice, this means a project supported by hundreds of people donating small amounts can receive more matching funds than one backed by a few large donors. A 1$ donation can be matched with tens or even hundreds of dollars in additional funding. In a traditional funding model, a few large donations can dominate the outcome of matching funds in a crowdfunding scenario. Quadratic funding changes that by giving more weight to projects backed by a larger number of contributors, even if each contribution is small.
Why are you using quadratic funding?
The way internet freedom tools are funded today often doesn’t reflect the communities that rely on them. Quadratic funding allows us to distribute funds more equitably across the ecosystem, amplify grassroots support, not just large contributions, and reduce dependence on a small number of large-dollar funders. Because each donation acts as a vote, the community has a direct role in deciding what gets funded. It also aligns with how we think about the internet itself: decentralized, participatory, and resistant to concentration of power.
Why are you only accepting cryptocurrency?
In partnership with Funding the Commons, we’re experimenting with something new with this campaign. A cryptocurrency-native approach gives the Tor Project a way to work with communities that already understand privacy, open infrastructure, and public goods as shared responsibilities. Some of the infrastructure available in the cryptocurrency world makes it easy to run a campaign like this in a light-weight, flexible way, and get funds to the benefiting organizations quickly.
What if I want to donate USD / CAD / EUR / fiat to one of the projects?
It’s more than welcome! If you'd prefer to donate in fiat to a project, visit their website to make a donation. Note that only contributions made through this campaign via cryptocurrency are eligible for match funding.
Why are you only accepting BTC, ETH, XMR, ZEC, and GLM?
We’re using a limited set of currencies for this campaign to ensure the system is secure, reliable, and transparent at launch. Using this subsection of currencies means we can process contributions efficiently and distribute matching funds transparently. We hope to accept more currencies in future crowdfunding rounds.
Why do Tor and Funding the Commons get a percentage of the total raised?
15% of the total funds raised will be donated to the Tor Project and Funding the Commons, which allows us to build, support, and coordinate this campaign. Our goal is to keep this percentage as low as possible while still enabling us to support and run a secure, reliable, and privacy-preserving campaign.
I’m having an issue donating, who can I contact?
Please email giving(at)torproject.org and we’ll do our best to assist you.
Who can I contact if I have questions?
If your questions are not answered here above, please email giving(at)torproject.org.