Hi,
Mike, your questions are all valid. Remember where this project is coming from. Donncha put this together at the Dublin Bitcoin Hackathon and it was designed to give back a little bit to the Relay Operators. I never expected anything in return for my relays but im glad that onintip exists and the approach seems to be to give everybody a little bit back based on the consensus.
Exit operators can get a lot of legal trouble and i acknowledge that but without Middle Relays, Guards, Bridges etc. TOR would not be possible. It seems to be always about the Exit's. There are different organizations for Exit's and now they should be preferred on oniontip.com ?
It is hard not to feel like a second class Relay operator when you don't run an Exit. Im happy that there is a possibility like oniontip and btw. there is nothing similar on the torproject website. You can donate to the torproject via bitcoin but there is no way to choose who should receive this donation like you can do on oniontip.com
Im not sure if it is necessary for oniontip to provide the best possible distribution of the donations from the projects point of view (diversity etc.) It seems to be a different approach just to give back to everybody and it has a certain amount of charme.
It is easy to use and it seems to be working and becoming more and more popular.
I like it.