[saurik]

(It isn't clear to me that it even makes sense to compare Tor and Orchid, as I don't think Tor tries to accomplish the same goal as Orchid, but I am going to take this comment at face value and accept the premise ;P.) FWIW, not only does Tor not need to take payments on iOS/Android devices, afaik Tor still doesn't have a working iOS port (as it uses too much memory to be a network extension).

If you just don't like money being involved, then you are leaving a lot of speed on the table (Tor clearly has a public good issue: they want you to use it... but not waste it, which is weird). (And like, they know this, and want to figure out how to add payments, but they are--I think intelligently--having issues figuring out how to support payments while keeping their goals intact.)

That all said... Tor is also only barely decentralized, if we are on that topic :( it has only like 9 directory servers, you certainly can't run your own to help/verify, and control of those servers is sufficient to pretty narrowly direct traffic. When asked "what would you do if someone threatened your family to alter the results from your server?", the Tor developer I talked to seriously seemed to have not considered that problem before? It was strange.

I've gone to great lengths to try to prevent anyone at Orchid from having that level of control, even when dealing with money purchased via in-app payments (so: no one come threaten my loved ones? it won't help you ;P).

[dlss]

> I don't think Tor tries to accomplish the same goal as Orchid

If the goal isn't "Anonymity Online" (taken from torproject.org), what is Orchid's goal?

> afaik Tor still doesn't have a working iOS port

https://onionbrowser.com/

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-onion-browser-and-more...

[saurik]

I encourage you to look at orchid.com (or, better yet, the README file in the git repository) for information about Orchid instead of torproject.org ;P. Orchid is most often described as "a decentralized bandwidth marketplace", and now (apparently) as "a new model of VPN". I do not believe that the word "anonymity" is generally used to describe the effect of using Orchid (though I'm sure the term has probably been used in one or two places over the years inadvertently, as there is some overlap between it and the word "private", which better describes what Orchid is accomplishing; if you go back to like, early 2020 on archive.org, you can see orchid.com was nigh unto littered with the word "private"--calling it a "privacy network" for "private browsing"--but not "anonym(ity|ous)").

As for Onion Browser (which is notably a third-party app), I will clarify (as I'd assumed the points were taken together): Tor does not have "a working iOS port" capable of VPN-like service (what Tor sometimes calls "transparent proxy"), such as to use apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram over Tor (as in, something useful to accomplish the goals of a user on mobile, as the world--and to be clear: this sucks--is no longer truly accessible via the web). This would require a Network Extension on iOS, which has very weird and somewhat frustrating resource limitations... and here I will note that I know well the developer of iCepa (mentioned in that blog post), and, due to life circumstances, he had to abandon that work many years ago (before it was able to be finished).

FWIW, I entirely appreciate that Tor isn't really designed to support "VPN-like service" (and, in fact, goes so far as to discourage the usage of their "transparent proxy" functionality): they do not consider that to be an appropriate way to implement "anonymity online"... which maybe helps make the difference between the projects clear? Brian (Fox!) had had a great explanation (this isn't an exact quote... I believe he worded it much better): Tor attempts to make you "anonymous" online (which really requires a browser); Orchid, in stark contrast, can help to make your communication "private", helping prevent third-parties (whether ISPs or governments) from interfering with your communication (which may or may not be "anonymous": that's kind of out of Orchid's control).