[tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Webmaster]

If I may be allowed to add my 2cents as a newbie...

Just found the website https://torstatus.blutmagie.de  Linked off the 
https://www.torservers.net site.  If this is reliable, then stats would 
be easy to determine.    List the say...top 5(random number) of each 
country and support them?  If a particular country does not have the min 
5 then run a contest... As other exit nodes reach a milestone in 
say...uptime + Bandwidth + Location , they are added to the support 
list.  This gives a goal for node operators to reach, and tells you they 
are good system admins and should be taken care of.

A secondary with the "top 5 idea"  After the "top 5" are taken care of, 
if there is money left over,  a voting system could be put into place 
where the community could vote on which node to donate to OR the ability 
to earmark their donations to particular nodes.

On 07/29/2012 09:25 PM, Zac Lym wrote:
> This seems (to me) like an obvious suggestion, so my apologies if it's 
> already been thought up.
>
> Why not establish a team/scoreboard system, like those used for 
> distributed computing and BitCoin mining?  This elegantly solves a few 
> problems while with minimal resource commitment from the Tor 
> organization.Most importantly, it's a way to pump money into the 
> system without ruining the current atmosphere.   Sponsors could easily 
> buy some bandwidth or people can also just donate their own 
> connections and join a particular team.  The scoreboard is based on 
> goodwill, not dollars spent.It also eliminates the hassle of setting 
> prices, as teams can compete for dollars and bandwidth provided, 
> essentially setting their own prices.  The org could also setup a 
> payment system, like we-pay, that the team admins can configure to 
> deposit funds.  It could be set as a proof of work system, paying 
> after the bandwidth has been provided.
>
> This also allows a degree of control to prevent abuse from admins 
> trying to juice stats by abusing some network infrastructure, like 
> dummy trial accounts on hosting sites.  A group admin could block 
> specific hosts or the Tor project could remove an entire group.
>
> Finally, this could allow for the Tor project to create metrics based 
> on things other than speed, akin to how Folding at home scores GPU and 
> CPU contributions differently.  Then the project can set anonymity 
> goals for the network (such as location, ISP, backbone provider, etc) 
> and the volunteers will adjust their patterns accordingly.
>
> Finally, I would like to strongly suggest taking a cut of all 
> donations to pay for the new infrastructure and Tor research and 
> development.  I wouldn't want development to slow on Tor because 
> donations are going to bandwidth instead. Indeed, I would prefer we 
> spend a ton of money on the stenography efforts and usability.
>
> Anyway, thanks for the hard work!
> -Zach Lym
>
>
>
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