I wrote:
Sorry but reading these kinds of things is kind of demoralizing.
+1 Perhaps crowdfunding a pool from which subsidies could be distributed would be fairer.
It isn't sufficient. I've got $6-10 from it in more than a year, and almost all of that was because I was an "early adopter". Maybe it could be better designed, but I'm not confident that that model will ever be particularly useful.
Part of the reason is that the donations are portioned solely on bandwidth share, along with guard and exit status. That discourages carefully maintained relays on carefully selected hosts. In the worst case (although I don't find it too likely, simply because there will never be enough money), it could lead to a "get a free-ish VPS if you run Tor on it!" situation.
I don't feel too obligated to defend my request, though. It's reasonable for people donating large amounts of time and resources to occasionally ask for support.