The Tor Project, the nonprofit behind the most widely used anonymity network on the internet, is launching a crypto-native crowdfunding campaign to fund privacy and censorship-circumvention tools. The campaign runs from May 19 to June 18, 2026, and supports roughly 10 to 11 nonprofit projects working on secure communications and public-interest digital infrastructure.
The organization whose browser is launched approximately 4.8 million times daily has historically depended on traditional grants. This campaign represents a deliberate pivot toward decentralized funding, using a quadratic funding model that prioritizes the number of unique donors over the size of individual contributions. If 500 people each give $5, that project gets more matching funds than one individual dropping $2,500.
The matching pool sits at $115,000, contributed by Cake Wallet, Zcash Community Grants, Logos, and Octant. The campaign is co-led by Funding the Commons, an organization focused on sustainable funding mechanisms for public goods. Selected projects include SecureDrop, the whistleblower submission system used by major newsrooms, and OnionShare, which enables anonymous file sharing over the Tor network.
Traditional grant funding, particularly from US agencies, has historically comprised a significant portion of the organization's budget. That funding model carries an obvious tension: a privacy tool used by journalists, activists, and dissidents worldwide being bankrolled in part by the same governments that sometimes surveil those very users. According to Freedom House, global internet freedom has declined for 15 consecutive years.