I’m curious what it costs to host a node I don’t speak German and my browser doesn’t offer translations so I have no idea how the donations would be applied.
Hi Gribladeen,
Thanks for your message, and welcome to deSEC! 
Our current cost per frontend node is between 100 and 170 €, depending on the location. (The cost may seem high for a VM, but a significant fraction of it comes from the Anycast connectivity.)
Donations are primarily used to cover server and network expenses. We highly appreciate node sponsors as our infrastructure is a significant cost factor.
If you have further questions on how to support us, you can also contact us at support@desec.io. That may be easier than posting a translation of our donation page here 
Stay secure,
Peter
If it helps to discuss a potential node at OVH in Montreal at the Beauharnois DC’s I could probably help there. I’m a huge fan of the idea of deSEC and would really love to contribute in some meaningful way.
The Librapay says the goals are 500 €/month but if I just throw money in the pool I don’t get to learn how to set a node up so I’m torn. I can offer a fair contribution monthly regardless.
The challenge is that new nodes will have to be made part of our Anycast networks (either ns1.desec.io or ns2.desec.org), so they need special peering and a special network setup. That’s usually only possible when staying within the network boundaries of the infrastructure providers for these networks.
One could consider adding an additional OVH network, which would then have to start with points of presence on several continents. (If we would start ns3 with Canada only, then one third of the clients (those who decide to send their query to ns3) would only be communicating with the Canada node. The networks therefore need to have comparable geographical spread.)
The Liberapay goal is set at 500 € so that it looks less frightening. In fact, the goal is higher (as explained earlier in this thread, but also on our donation page.) We therefore would really appreciate any sustained contribution!
If you’d like to learn how to set up a node, you can familiarize yourself with https://github.com/desec-io/desec-frontend-node. It actually boils down to cloning the repository, setting some variables in the .env file, and running the application with docker-compose (more information is in the README file). Note, however, that you will not be able to sync with our main instance as that would require you to have a VPN key (but those are not public).
Stay secure,
Peter
It actually boils down to cloning the repository, setting some variables in the .env file, and running the application with docker-compose (more information is in the README file).
It doesn’t seem entirely clear to me after reading the README.md which environment variables are required versus the ones that are there in case you wish to adjust your internal configuration.