All the empty space isn’t necessarily my choice, the case just doesn’t come in a smaller version. That said, it was really easy to build the machine when there’s enough space to maneuver :)
I came here to post this. These days with one or two M.2 slots on the mainboard and optical drives going out of fashion, cases could/should be vastly smaller.
If you're happy with an iGPU, the Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny M75q with their 1 litre cases are very appealing. You can't really buy such small cases for DIY builds, unfortunately.
Supposedly Signal received ~$600k in donations in 2018 while spending ~4M in infrastructure costs[0], so OP is suggestion they do regular revenue generation via in-app features and whatnot instead of cryptocurrency stuff.
I'm not familiar with it, I've worked with a few Canadian government "strategies" to encourage different industries or outcomes and that's what my comment was based on, I believe it is general to most government or non-market based funding.