A coalition of privacy and crypto organizations is using quadratic funding to channel crypto donations to 10 nonprofits fighting censorship and surveillance worldwide.
The Tor Project and Funding the Commons today announced the launch of what they say is the first Web3-native crowdfunding campaign dedicated to the internet freedom ecosystem, bringing together organizations from the privacy, cryptocurrency, and open-source worlds to address a mounting funding crisis for tools millions of people rely on.
The campaign, live at internetfreedom.torproject.org and accessible via Onion Service, accepts donations in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, Monero, and Golem through June 18.
It benefits ten nonprofits working across censorship circumvention, secure communications, and privacy-preserving infrastructure — among them SecureDrop, the whistleblower submission system used by newsrooms; OONI, which documents internet censorship and shutdowns globally; and the Miaan Group, which supports internet freedom specifically for users in Iran.
The campaign uses a quadratic funding model, a mechanism increasingly associated with Web3 public goods funding that weights matching contributions toward projects with broad community backing rather than simply rewarding the largest donors.
$115,000 Matching Pool
An initial $115,000 matching pool — contributed by Cake Wallet, Zcash Community Grants, Logos, and Octant — will amplify donations made during the campaign period.
“Quadratic funding is one of web3’s answers to how critical infrastructure gets funded: Institutional money follows community signals, not the other way around,” David Casey, Director of Funding the Commons, wrote in an announcement. “Any donation moves the match pool, no matter the size.”
The announcement comes against a backdrop of sustained deterioration in global internet freedom. According to the organizers, freedom of the internet has declined for 15 consecutive years, with censorship and surveillance growing more sophisticated even as the organizations building tools to counter them have faced financial pressure and, in some cases, staff reductions and scaling back of technical infrastructure.
Public Goods Funding
The campaign also represents an experiment in alternative funding models for public-interest digital infrastructure, at a moment when traditional grant and government-adjacent funding sources have come under strain.
The Tor Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose tools include Tor Browser and the Tails operating system, has historically relied on a mix of government, foundation, and individual funding. Funding the Commons, originally incubated by Protocol Labs, operates as an independent platform focused on decentralized public goods funding infrastructure.
Beyond Tor’s own tools, the campaign supports a range of projects: OnionShare for anonymous file sharing, Ricochet Refresh for metadata-resistant messaging, Onion Browser for iOS, OpenArchive for human rights documentation, ASL19 for anti-censorship support, Unredacted for censorship circumvention infrastructure, and Osservatorio Nessuno for protecting journalists and civil society organizations.
