Traditionally, individuals have donated to the Tor Project through BitPay, with funds hitting a massive $460,000 in 2018.
However, based on a recent tweet by Sarah Stevenson, Tor Project's chief fundraising director, Tor is looking to adopt new payment methods to fund its operations.
One of the options includes the Lightning Network, which is receiving a lot of hype this year.
It is a payment mode that functions as a major cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.
It conducts fast and reliable transactions, hence the consideration as an option.
Essentially, the idea is to ease transaction traffic off the Bitcoin network.
Although it may pass as a potential groundbreaking solution, the Lightning Network has encountered its fair share of criticisms-chief among them is LN's scalability issues.
However, with a new year, more people have started warming up to the LN, owing to its remarkable improvements and potential for future growth.
Additionally, the pricing of Bitcoin is considerably high, hence hindering users from adopting it for daily transactions.
The Lightning Network is quite the opposite as it enables people to make Bitcoin transactions without any facilitation fees.
This is as a result of payment channels created between two users. Payments can also be made by anonymous users through network channels.
The Lightning Network as an Easy and Fee-Free Platform
A Lightning Network is basically a group of commands occurring above Bitcoin to oversee small payments.
Hence, in basic terms, it is a layer two solution to Bitcoin. Its networking aspect enables connections to facilitate fast and free services.
The Lightning Network is reliable when it comes to payment avenues.
Additionally, several amounts of transactions can be made without detections by the blockchain.
To conclude a transaction, the main blockchain is used to create a closing transaction that ideally settles all previous transactions.
Additionally, the payer and the receiver both indicate how much they owe each other without exchanging cash.
We are close to launching methods other than BitPay for donating cryptocurrency. Send me a direct message about LN so I can research more.
- Sarah Stevenson (@elkakai) March 4, 2019
Lightning could be essential for the Tor Project's donations because it will oversee all sorts of future payment methods become a reality in support of Tor's further development of its anonymity tools.
Despite the Lightning Network still having a long way in implementation and becoming fully operational, this is a move in the right direction for the Tor Project.
Owing to its immediate and feeless cash deposit methods, it will enable the whole process to be more secure and anonymous, which is advantageous in the operational functions of the Tor network.