i had similar questions and concerns when i first found out, so i did some more digging. i certainly wouldn't call tor decentralized. it's good stuff, just ask Snowden.

i believe the axiom tor is holding to here is that freedom only exists within boundaries, otherwise it's just chaos.

tor is decentralized and there are relay requirements, relay policies, and criteria for rejecting bad relays in order to prevent corruption of the tor network.

the shitcoin-scheme (likely ATOR) that was incentivizing relay runners seems to have involved misconfigured relays, relays in high-risk locations, and putting users at risk from lack of awareness of what they were contributing to.

still it's good to know that the tor project, is looking into a better way of incentivizing relay runners that doesn't involve the potential of putting:

"user anonymity at risk in designs that prioritize some traffic, to legal classification and liability concerns that would arise with the introduction of real money to loss of location diversity and many more."

nostr is a pioneer in the space of incentivizing relay runners and we haven't agreed on policies for running relays or how best to handle malicious operators yet. we're still figuring it out while arguing over nips like 94/95 and fleshing out their use cases among many other things. nostr does not yet have the mission critical privacy and anonymity that the tor network is used and known for, but i do feel we may serve as examples or models for each other.

i use nostr over tor and recommend others do the same

check out their official respomse statement here:

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-network-community-health-update/