We opted for the "if we don't stay relevant to the world, Tor will never grow enough" route. I think that's still a good decision today.
This is probably an ok thing as everyone knows a useless network is a dead network. So maybe in times of glut, do some release or authority based tuning to keep the balance.
I would launch a project to map/AS/speed/etc the current relays and base tuning/funding on that.
I hear that running exit relays in the US is increasingly difficult these days, which is an extra shame because that's where a lot of Internet diversity is
That diversity can be true. It's kindof hard for small countries/regions to be diverse when essentially the only people they peer with are maybe two Tier-n's from other countries, usually piped in via their one or two fiber links, buried, paid for and run by their own government.
One place to look for some is the EDU space. They've got tons of bandwidth, it's a matter of finding the ear of an outranking professor or humanities/law/whatever department since central IT usually won't.
Unfortunately, most AUP's roll down from the Tier-1's. So the only real way to defeat that, in the US and elsewhere, is to become the ISP. Much as torservers tries to own complaints. It's just pricier in work, funds and responsibility.
Non-exit relays are certainly easier to deploy with nearly unlimited diversity and speed. Perhaps keeping a PR/funding push there to the point of glut is an easy and valid win as well. Then you're left with just the exits.
I would accept funds to do some of this at cost plus beer, but just as it's hard to hand them out, it can be just as hard to receive them.
Sorry, I think most of this goes in the funding thread, so please feel free to quote any of this over to that one.