Hello folks,
I’m very happy to share a final update from the campaign supported by this grant!
The impact of your donation
Today, we can share that more than $200,000 USD was raised in total, with $174,536 being distributed to 10 different participating grantee projects. This is possible because of the Zcash community’s match donation. 
More than the total, what matters is how we got here:
- 580 unique donors
- 662 contributions
- an average donation of $41 USD
Donors made contributions in BTC, ETH, ZEC, XMR, and GLM: By value, the direct donations split about 52% Bitcoin, 27% Monero, 13% Ethereum, and 8% Zcash. It’s excellent to see the very clear overlap between Tor, Zcash, and our shared communities and values.
Funding distribution
| Project | Direct donations | Donor units | QF share | Match | Total to project |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Onion Browser | $11,854 | 190 | 63.3% | $99,266 | $111,119 |
| Unredacted | $5,262 | 129 | 22.6% | $35,467 | $40,729 |
| Osservatorio Nessuno | $2,894 | 84 | 7.5% | $11,740 | $14,633 |
| Paskoocheh (ASL19) | $390 | 32 | 0.6% | $4,611 | $5,000 |
| OpenArchive | $462 | 23 | 0.4% | $4,538 | $5,000 |
| SecureDrop | $475 | 19 | 0.3% | $4,525 | $5,000 |
| Ricochet Refresh | $930 | 34 | 1.0% | $4,070 | $5,000 |
| OONI | $986 | 24 | 0.8% | $4,014 | $5,000 |
| OnionShare | $1,066 | 53 | 2.4% | $3,934 | $5,000 |
| Miaan Group | $2,628 | 23 | 1.2% | $2,372 | $5,000 |
| Total | $26,945 | 100% | $174,536 | $201,481 |
- 15% of funds raised were used to cover the staff and infrastructure to build and run the campaign. We kept it as low as possible while still running a secure, privacy-preserving campaign.
Lessons learned
- Participation can meaningfully shape funding outcomes. The campaign showed that hundreds of individual donors can influence how support moves through an ecosystem, even when direct donation totals are relatively modest.
- Discoverability needs to be designed more intentionally in future rounds: Tor-owned channels, including prominently featuring the campaign in Tor Browser, helped participating projects reach people who may not have encountered their work otherwise. That visibility created value beyond the dollars raised. But better-known projects entered this campaign with an advantage and benefited disproportionately from their visibility and existing community reach.
- This model is promising, but operationally complex. Multi-currency donations, privacy-preserving contributions, conversions, matching calculations, campaign infrastructure, and project-level reconciliation all take time and care. We waited to share final results because we wanted to provide accurate numbers.
Thank you!
This campaign brought together communities that understand privacy, open infrastructure, and public goods as shared responsibilities. It showed what becomes possible when funders, users, and public-interest technology projects move together.
Thank you to Zcash Community Grants, the folks on this forum, and the Zcash community broadly for participating in every level of this campaign.