Every month, we post a brief report on the usage of the Snowflake bridge in the previous month, in order to keep our donors informed about what their donation enables. This time, we first have an additional statement to make regarding donations.
We, Snowflake Daily Operations, manage the operation of one of the bridges of the Snowflake censorship circumvention system, and collect donations to pay for the costs of keeping the bridge running (which mostly consist of bandwidth costs). Since 2023, the largest source of donations has been Mullvad VPN AB, a company that provides a VPN service. In the past weeks, it has been reported that one of Mullvad’s two co-CEOs donated a large amount of money to a dangerous populist political party in Sweden. As a result, we have decided to reject future funding from Mullvad and return the unused portion of funds already received from them in 2026.
- Techprofil ger miljoner till Örebropartiet
- Miljonregn till Örebropartiet från techprofil – Nerikes Allehanda
- Intern kris på Mullvad: ”Drar ned företaget”
- Bara Örebropartiet fick miljoner i gåva – Nerikes Allehanda
- Some Mullvad VPN customers tunnel for exit after co-founder donates millions to populist party
We think this is the right thing to do. But it puts us in a bind – we will need to find new sources of funding, or else scale back or terminate the operation of the Snowflake bridge we manage.
Snowflake is a tool that helps people get online when normal Internet access is blocked. It has been built into Tor Browser since 2021. Snowflake is effective at its purpose: an estimated tens of thousands of people use it concurrently, on average. Because of that, the backend infrastructure that supports it is expensive, both in hardware and in bandwidth. We started Snowflake Daily Operations to organize the maintenance of a Snowflake bridge and to collect funds to support its continued operation. We managed the fundraising on Open Collective, which means you can see how much we receive in donations, how much we spend, and what we spend it on. Hosting and bandwidth costs amount to about 4,000 EUR per year.
Snowflake Daily Operations is supported by many donors, but largest share of donations had been from Mullvad. In the past year, 4,000 EUR have come from Mullvad and 1,115 EUR have come from other donors. Refusing money from Mullvad will leave us with only about 25% of what we need to cover annual expenses, at current usage rates.
Those who have donated to Snowflake Daily Operations, we thank you for your support. You directly support the freedom of expression of thousands of people. If you have thought about making a one-time or recurring donation, now is a good time – the amount of donations we can sustain will help us decide how best to use the bridge.
Signed,
David Fifield
Erik Nordberg
Linus Nordberg
Usage of the snowflake-01 bridge remained remarkably stable in July 2026, after tapering off through June following the end of the Internet shutdown in Iran in May. The steady usage is reflected in both concurrent users and bandwidth.
Looking at individual countries, we see a minor decline in users from Iran (ir/us), mostly counterbalanced by an increase in users from Russia (ru).
