Hi,

Nobody audited the code of 'reiya' project and there is currently no concrete evidence to confirm that the funds deposited in that Monero wallet will indeed be redirected to the relays. Therefore, we strongly recommend not using that project.

Regarding funding Tor relays, please follow the process described in the meta-proposal and submit your proposal to the relay operators community:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/blob/master/001-commu...

cheers, Gus

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 12:48:58PM +0000, tor@nullvoid.me wrote:

Hi,

https://reiya.io/ exists. Something like this?

There is a legal reason the Tor project doesn't fund nodes.

Regards,

On October 12, 2023 11:41:58 AM UTC, torrrelays@riseup.net wrote:

...

I provided some high speed Tor nodes (non-exits and guards) but I quit in this year to make some space for my other projects. I would continue collaborating by keep Tor nodes online if I receive some donation. Is it just me, because I received $0 for running those Tor relays.

So my proposal is this:

1. make a donate-torrelay-owner.tpo website
2. let Tor relay owners link their

PayPal/Striple/BitCoin/OpenCollective/AmazonPay/GooglePay/Whatever account 3. the Tor project and other good folks put money into the large bottle (donate-torrelay-owner website) 4. the donation then split by the participants & send to each accounts monthly

By doing this, you are creating sustainable mechanism to keep Tor nodes running and other people who have access to their servers may join. More Tor nodes will be added to the network & owners get paid at least. Win-win.

Please do this! _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

---

tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

This is not my site, it just reminds me of oniontip and tortip that used to run.

The source code in accessible here: https://git.kyun.host/naphtha/reiya

The viewkey and instructions on how to audit it is here https://reiya.io/audit

While even providing the view key, and having positive transaction history does not prevent an exit scam in the future. Ideally the TPO could find a trusted user/organization to run the official one.

What I'm trying to say is that the "code" for your idea already exists in a primitive form.

Regards,

On October 12, 2023 4:39:05 PM UTC, boldsuck lists@for-privacy.net wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 12. Oktober 2023, 15:04:07 CEST schrieb gus:

...

Nobody audited the code of 'reiya' project and there is currently no concrete evidence to confirm that the funds deposited in that Monero wallet will indeed be redirected to the relays. Therefore, we strongly recommend not using that project.

...

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 12:48:58PM +0000, tor@nullvoid.me wrote:

...

...

https://reiya.io/ exists. Something like this?

Unfortunately the site is currently not accessible. If this is the same one that was discussed at a tor-relay-meeting a few months ago, then I can only agree with Gus' opinion.

A reputable donation site would publish the Monero View key.

https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/viewkey.html Every Monero address has a private viewkey which can be shared. By sharing a viewkey, a person is allowing access to view every incoming transaction for that address.

Hi,

gus gus@torproject.org:

Hi,

Nobody audited the code of 'reiya' project and there is currently no concrete evidence to confirm that the funds deposited in that Monero wallet will indeed be redirected to the relays. Therefore, we strongly recommend not using that project.

I recently had a conversation with kyun.host about their project reiya.io and they seemed more discouraged than scammy.

I have permission from them to copy our conversation to this mailing list (sorry for the formatting but i couldn't copy and had to type it over):

Me: <informing them that i haven't received a payout for the last two months> Them: i haven't checked that project in some time, let me check the logs and i'll get back to you Me: Have you checked it? Them: yeah it's been failing to send txs for some time im going to shut it down and manually send each relay however much they're owed Me: Do you plan to shutdown reiya? Them: yes Me: Why? Them: just not worth my time. from day 1 the community team lead or whatever from the tor project was calling it a scam. and trying to get my posts deleted in r/tor and r/monero. the tor project just smells fishy and i would advise everyone to move on to i2p instead. even after i told them its open source and they can host it themselves. they just said uhh well we cant do that it would be illegal or something. Me: I saw your post on r/monero and i recall that gus commented there and "warned" that they don't know if it is a scam. Do you still have the conversation with them where they said it's illegal? Maybe i can ask on the tor-relays mailing list as a relay operator. Reiya is the only way i know about how relay operators could get some donations for their relays and it would be sad to see it disappear only because of a misunderstanding or something. Them: nvm yeah i was misremembering the guy saying it was illegal. gus just annoyed me thats all. calling it a scam without really calling it a scam and refusing to talk to me no matter how many times i tried. as i said theres a bug that stops it from sending out the transactions so its pretty much useless at this point. whoever wants to maintain it can maintain it and i can provide hosting for free. but im not going to invest my time im this anymore. Me: Is it okay for you when i use our conversation to bring it up on the tor-relays mailing list to ask the torproject what their stance is? Them: yeah definitely. ive seen pretty much everyone other than gus in that convo was positive towards the project so maybe someone more trusted can pick it up. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-October/021343.html . this was the thread but i dont know how to reply to it im a zoomer.

So if reiya was a planned scam that didn't worked out then the torproject debunked a scammer. But if it wasn't then the torproject discouraged a community member who just wanted to support and strenghten the tor network with providing an easy-to-setup way for relay operators to get some donations for their bandwidth and sysadmin time.

There has to be a vetted and official way of donating to relay operators because otherwise scammers will take their advantages and good actors could get burned. The torproject can not rely on getting informed about every website that claims to take donations for relay operators and the torproject has no way of preventing anyone to make a fake donation website to spread it at places where uninformed or unsuspecting Tor users are around.

I obviously only know reiyas stance about it but it looks like the handling of the situation was not great.

What are the torprojects plans to deal with situations like that in the future?

Thanks

Regarding funding Tor relays, please follow the process described in the

meta-proposal and submit your proposal to the relay operators community:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/blob/master/001-commu...

cheers, Gus

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 12:48:58PM +0000, tor@nullvoid.me wrote:

...

Hi,

https://reiya.io/ exists. Something like this?

There is a legal reason the Tor project doesn't fund nodes.

Regards,

On October 12, 2023 11:41:58 AM UTC, torrrelays@riseup.net wrote:

...

I provided some high speed Tor nodes (non-exits and guards) but I quit in this year to make some space for my other projects. I would continue collaborating by keep Tor nodes online if I receive some donation. Is it just me, because I received $0 for running those Tor relays.

So my proposal is this:

1. make a donate-torrelay-owner.tpo website
2. let Tor relay owners link their

PayPal/Striple/BitCoin/OpenCollective/AmazonPay/GooglePay/Whatever account 3. the Tor project and other good folks put money into the large bottle (donate-torrelay-owner website) 4. the donation then split by the participants & send to each accounts monthly

By doing this, you are creating sustainable mechanism to keep Tor nodes running and other people who have access to their servers may join. More Tor nodes will be added to the network & owners get paid at least. Win-win.

Please do this! _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

---

tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

-- The Tor Project Community Team Lead _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

gus gus@torproject.org:

Hello,

Hi,

I wrote this advisory:

...

There is currently no concrete evidence to confirm that the funds deposited in this wallet will indeed be redirected to the relays.

And your first message to the reiya guy was:

...

Me: <informing them that i haven’t received a payout for the last two months>

-*-

I see we are on the same page. I am not interested in running after every site where trustful people may have donated that (claims to) handle donations for relay operators.

And in the world of cryptocurrencies a donation address has to be stable because funds can still end up there years later so multiple independent sites that show up and get abandoned again doesn't sound like a good idea.

If you're interested on building a project to reward relay operators, please write a proposal and follow this process:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/blob/master/001-commu...

New proposals are welcome for discussion.

Not me but we probably should get there before the real scammers start with their "job".

However, sharing a project or wallet saying 'donate to my wallet and I will give back to relays operators' will be repelled.

Repelling something like this without having a proper replacement suggestion or talking about this topic at places like this list is no good solution either unless you want to stop that kind people donate to Tor relay operators.

Assuming reiya was an honest project and probably a one-man-show then you discouraged them. Now acting like "Look at it! I knew what was going to happen!" from your position as community lead is not totally fair.

If the project or person is coming with good intentions, they will understand our reasons to push back.

I think they do. Let me quote them from above: "yeah definitely. ive seen pretty much everyone other than gus in that convo was positive towards the project so maybe someone more trusted can pick it up."

Important to note that there were other projects like that in the past such as oniontip (https://github.com/DonnchaC/oniontip/). And there were some great discussions on *how* to reward relay operators:

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-incentives-research-roundup-goldstar-par-bra...

The last part of that blog post is the most interesting one and describes the current problems of most cryptocurrencies and other anonymity networks that make use of tokens pretty well: " Another point to make here is that most of these approaches have nothing to do with giving out or transferring real dollars. The tokens in most of these schemes are useful only to receive traffic priority in Tor. Will there be third party markets that form around the exchange of the tokens? Sure. And they may be speculated. But at the end of the day, the tokens would still only provide prioritized traffic. Depending on the configuration of the priority scheduler, the difference between priority traffic and normal traffic may not be that extreme. It is conceivable that the tokens would not be worth nearly enough to compensate an operator for the ISP connection, much less the overhead involved with updating the software, maintaining the machine, and talking with the ISP "

I am not proposing to get paied for my relays (although i wouldn't fight against it). Speaking about myself, i took a look into oxen/lokinet and nym and decided that i am not going to participate there. The financial rewards were not a deciding factor for that decision.

But i want donations that are supposed to go to us relay operators in fact end up in relay operators pockets. The torproject is the only party in the chain with enough power and insight to work towards that goal. A single relay operator can not do much and can not be everywhere.

It's important to understand that i am not criticizing you for saying that there is no evidence that funds from projects like reiya will in fact end up at relay operators. I have no evidence to believe that they are honest and i have no evidence to believe that they are dishonest.

I am criticizing you for blocking the approach of someone to organize donations towards relay operators without having a proper replacement and without taking about it in public places although the torproject seems to think about the rewarding of relay operators since at least 2009.

Nine years after the last blog post about rewarding relay operators maybe it's a good time for another blogpost now?

Thanks!

Am 01.11.2023 um 17:53 schrieb dewaj dewaj@garlic.com: [...] Who wants to be identified as a tor user, let alone a relay operator? […]

I don't like this attitude at all and I don't think it goes with the demands of most operators either.

I have often heard on this list and elsewhere sentences like: "It is an act of anonymity to use Tor. It is an act of transparency to operate Tor relays." I agree with this completely.

Tor relay operators should always be responsive and have no problem saying who they are.

If there are problems with a relay that are criminally relevant, the company running the server will hand over the operator's data to the authorities anyway.

Martin