t2bot.io seeking donations
February 8th, 2023 by TravisR
Hey all,
Since 2017, t2bot.io has provided communities on Matrix bots and bridges to use for free, and while there’s no plan to charge for access, the cost of running the service is about $12k USD/year just to exist.
Since August 2020, t2bot.io’s primary source of funding has been from the Matrix.org Foundation, though with the Foundation’s latest focus on raising funds for itself, it feels like the right thing to do is get t2bot.io independently funded.
If you are able, please donate to t2bot.io here. All donations go towards the cost of operation, with any excess (if t2bot.io is so lucky…) going towards hiring developers to work on/build bridges as well as into the Foundation to thank them for keeping t2bot.io online all these years.
Currently, t2bot.io serves 86 thousand Discord and Telegram communities, bridging 325 thousand users each month, and 11.3 million users since 2017. There’s also 962 thousand rooms with a t2bot.io user in them, leaving only about 94 thousand rooms as archived, across 25 thousand different homeservers.
Operating at this scale requires, well, $12k USD per year: if you’re able, please consider donating. There’s also a question of whether t2bot.io should even be operating at this scale in the first place: Matrix is all about decentralization and owning your own conversations, which naturally means there should be many smaller bridges for communities or even a discord.com-provided bridge for everyone to use. For the time being though, t2bot.io is offered as a convenience and aims to adapt itself as needed to keep providing value.
Questions, concerns, etc are best discussed in #help:t2bot.io on Matrix. Nearly every detail of how t2bot.io works is intended to be shared openly, which includes the financial aspect of running the service, so ask away 🙂
Thanks,
TravisR, t2bot.io