[tor-relays] Discuss. Why not split donations to Tor relay owners?

[Tor Relays]

Hi,

gus <gus at torproject.org>:

> Hi,
>
> Nobody audited the code of 'reiya' project and there is currently no
> concrete evidence to confirm that the funds deposited in that Monero
> wallet will indeed be redirected to the relays. Therefore, we strongly
> recommend not using that project.
>

I recently had a conversation with kyun.host about their project reiya.io
and they seemed more discouraged than scammy.

I have permission from them to copy our conversation to this mailing list
(sorry for the formatting but i couldn't copy and had to type it over):

Me: <informing them that i haven't received a payout for the last two
months>
Them: i haven't checked that project in some time, let me check the logs
and i'll get back to you
Me: Have you checked it?
Them: yeah it's been failing to send txs for some time im going to shut it
down and manually send each relay however much they're owed
Me: Do you plan to shutdown reiya?
Them: yes
Me: Why?
Them: just not worth my time. from day 1 the community team lead or
whatever from the tor project was calling it a scam. and trying to get my
posts deleted in r/tor and r/monero. the tor project just smells fishy and
i would advise everyone to move on to i2p instead. even after i told them
its open source and they can host it themselves. they just said uhh well we
cant do that it would be illegal or something.
Me: I saw your post on r/monero and i recall that gus commented there and
"warned" that they don't know if it is a scam. Do you still have the
conversation with them where they said it's illegal? Maybe i can ask on the
tor-relays mailing list as a relay operator. Reiya is the only way i know
about how relay operators could get some donations for their relays and it
would be sad to see it disappear only because of a misunderstanding or
something.
Them: nvm yeah i was misremembering the guy saying it was illegal. gus just
annoyed me thats all. calling it a scam without really calling it a scam
and refusing to talk to me no matter how many times i tried. as i said
theres a bug that stops it from sending out the transactions so its pretty
much useless at this point. whoever wants to maintain it can maintain it
and i can provide hosting for free. but im not going to invest my time im
this anymore.
Me: Is it okay for you when i use our conversation to bring it up on the
tor-relays mailing list to ask the torproject what their stance is?
Them: yeah definitely. ive seen pretty much everyone other than gus in that
convo was positive towards the project so maybe someone more trusted can
pick it up.
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-October/021343.html
. this was the thread but i dont know how to reply to it im a zoomer.


So if reiya was a planned scam that didn't worked out then the torproject
debunked a scammer.
But if it wasn't then the torproject discouraged a community member who
just wanted to support and strenghten the tor network with providing an
easy-to-setup way for relay operators to get some donations for their
bandwidth and sysadmin time.


There has to be a vetted and official way of donating to relay operators
because otherwise scammers will take their advantages and good actors could
get burned.
The torproject can not rely on getting informed about every website that
claims to take donations for relay operators and the torproject has no way
of preventing anyone to make a fake donation website to spread it at places
where uninformed or unsuspecting Tor users are around.

I obviously only know reiyas stance about it but it looks like the handling
of the situation was not great.

What are the torprojects plans to deal with situations like that in the
future?


Thanks

Regarding funding Tor relays, please follow the process described in the
> meta-proposal and submit your proposal to the relay operators
> community:
>
>
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/blob/master/001-community-relay-operator-process.md?ref_type=heads
>
> cheers,
> Gus
>
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 12:48:58PM +0000, tor at nullvoid.me wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > <https://reiya.io/> exists. Something like this?
> >
> > There is a legal reason the Tor project doesn't fund nodes.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > On October 12, 2023 11:41:58 AM UTC, torrrelays at riseup.net wrote:
> > >I provided some high speed Tor nodes (non-exits and guards) but I quit
> > >in this year to make some space for my other projects. I would continue
> > >collaborating by keep Tor nodes online if I receive some donation. Is it
> > >just me, because I received $0 for running those Tor relays.
> > >
> > >So my proposal is this:
> > >
> > >1. make a donate-torrelay-owner.tpo website
> > >2. let Tor relay owners link their
> > >PayPal/Striple/BitCoin/OpenCollective/AmazonPay/GooglePay/Whatever
> > >account
> > >3. the Tor project and other good folks put money into the large bottle
> > >(donate-torrelay-owner website)
> > >4. the donation then split by the participants & send to each accounts
> > >monthly
> > >
> > >By doing this, you are creating sustainable mechanism to keep Tor nodes
> > >running and other people who have access to their servers may join. More
> > >Tor nodes will be added to the network & owners get paid at least.
> > >Win-win.
> > >
> > >Please do this!
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >tor-relays mailing list
> > >tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
> > >https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
> > _______________________________________________
> > tor-relays mailing list
> > tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
> > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
>
> --
> The Tor Project
> Community Team Lead
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