[tor-relays] Money for relay operators and email addresses

[code9n via tor-relays <tor-relays@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

tl;dr:   Paying relay operators - yes, once it's decided how to share out the money.

          Requiring valid email addresses - yes.

          imo s.

It goes against the purely altruistic bit of me to say this but I definitely see the advantage of paying relay operators.  I run one pretty powerful relay on a commercial vps, costs me around $200 a year.  I'd run more but the money starts to pile up . . . so if I got significant enough recompense I would run more - good for Tor.

Also, has it been decided exactly how the money will be shared out?  If it's on the number or relays you operate that will incentivize many slow, weak relays at the expense of a few fast, good ones - bad for Tor.

  If it's on advertised bandwidth, is that hack-able?  It changes over time, do you take the average?  The figure on accounting day?  Do you go on the bytes per second?  Terabytes per month?  The consensus weight?

  Do you pay more for exit nodes as they're more 'useful', more, valuable to the network as a whole?  How about guards as opposed to middle, or bridges, snowflakes, etc.?

  Do you reward / penalize operators for / not keeping their relays up to date, etc.?

  Also paying for nodes could make it more viable for three letter agencies, etc. to run more relays, but I doubt it's about money for them as much as it is for us.  Or for relay abusers like those that were stealing crypto wallet creds.  On the whole it's probably better for tor to pay than not to, imo, (from the relay operators donations pot).

  Or someone could run a DoS attack by earning a significant proportion of all the money in the pot then shutting down their relays all at once.  Especially if the network grows to rely on the donations money.

    All of this 'sharing out donations money' thing is moot if the amount of money we'd each receive is trivial compared to the cost of running relays . . .

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  On the subject of requiring valid email addresses, I can't see any good reason not to do so.  It would be quite difficult to run a relay completely anonymously, especially if you have to pay for anything.  If you can achieve that, an email address that's not link-able to you shouldn't be beyond your ability.  And there are potentially occasions when Tor might want to contact you discreetly.  If you're doing something foolish or wrong do you really want it pointed out in a general announcement?

  My only reservation would be regarding receiving spam but as, I think it was @Boldsuck, said, that's not much of an issue in practice.

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