Just as in nature, greater diversity among the members of the Tor network's ecosystem increases the sustainability of the Tor network, the biggest benefit of which is to ensure users are more secure and better protected from traffic correlation attacks.
Over the years, the Tor team saw there was a need for greater support of the relay operator community and heard concerns about how to better meet their needs.
Have you considered running a relay, but didn't know where to start? You can become one of the many thousands of relay operators powering the Tor network, if you have some basic command-line experience.
Relay Search, formerly known as Atlas, is a web application to learn about currently running Tor relays and bridges. You can search by fingerprint, nickname, country, flags, and contact information and be returned information about advertised bandwidth, uptime, exit policies, and more.
The Tor community is vast and deep yet remains a virtual entity outside periodic physical events. In New York City on December 7, we are going to start to change that.