Members of The Onion Router (Tor) community have raised $86,081 as part of an initiative aimed at securing funds to find and squash issues in the popular browser.
Called the Bug Smash Fund, the initiative was launched at the beginning of August 2019, with the purpose of creating a reserve for the Tor Project to use for maintenance and bug patching.
The effort, Tor says, is aimed at keeping the “Tor Browser, the Tor network, and the many tools that rely on Tor strong, safe, and running smoothly.”
With $86,081 raised, the Bug Smash Fund campaign was more successful than anticipated, the Tor project says.
The contributions came from users worldwide, and in different forms, including online, through the mail, and at DEF CON and CCCamp. They also came in multiple currencies (cryptocurrencies and otherwise).
Trac tickets for new bugs will be tagged with BugSmashFund, which will allow the community to keep an eye on what the new funding helped achieve. Tor will also provide periodic updates on progress with these BugSmashFund tickets.
“Thank you to everybody who made a contribution to the Bug Smash Fund. This work is critical in helping us to provide safer tools for millions of people around the world exercising their human rights to privacy and freedom online,” Tor notes.
Users interested in contributing to the Bug Smash Fund but who did not get the chance to do so last month (all donations received in August went to the fund) can help the project by making contributions via donate.torproject.org and adding “Bug Smash Fund” into the comment field.
Related: Attacking Tor: What it Takes to Disrupt the Popular Onion Routing Network