[tzs]

> There would be no intermediary, such as GitHub, paying for the transaction fees

It sounds like there would also be no intermediary handling taxes. Each person receiving donations would be liable for dealing with taxes themselves, which could involve having to deal with the tax systems in every country/state in which one of their donors resides.

Unless your plan is to just ignore taxes and hope any tax authority that might want to come after you won't be able to obtain jurisdiction, you really want anything that involves accepting money from all over the world to go through some intermediary that operates in such a way as that intermediary is the merchant of record for the transaction.

There also might be issues with sanctions. If your country has sanctions against country X and you accept donations from someone in country X that might violate your country's laws. An intermediary can handle keeping track of that, making sure you only get donations from places that your country allows.

This could be even worse than the tax issues--at least with the tax issues it is other countries that might be trying to sue and/or prosecute you. With sanctions violations it is your own country, which is usually a lot harder to successful blow off.