This is surprisingly common. The other example off the top of my head, a single maintainer of a very popular project who had to temporarily abandon it due to lack of funds, is Denis Pushkarev (zloirock) and core.js (https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/blob/master/docs/2023-02...).
The majority of OSS projects have most of their contributions by one person (the project leader), and the vast majority of OSS contributors don't do it for their job. It seems nearly every single popular OSS project is like this (one unpaid, maybe sponsored, volunteer doing most of the work); it's not even worth listing projects and names, because you can just pick a couple projects you know and I bet at least one will be an example.
Fortunately, most of these people seem to be well-off (probably in part due to the quality of programming jobs), but every once in a while there's someone who's not so fortunate. It should be more common to sponsor maintainers, especially if they are asking for donations and offer proof that they genuinely need the money. (The world we live in, some people who have plenty fake issues to solicit donations, then others who genuinely need and deserve the money are scolded and left unfunded because of them. So I think it's fine to ask for donations, but be prepared to justify why you need them.)
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadThe majority of OSS projects have most of their contributions by one person (the project leader), and the vast majority of OSS contributors don't do it for their job. It seems nearly every single popular OSS project is like this (one unpaid, maybe sponsored, volunteer doing most of the work); it's not even worth listing projects and names, because you can just pick a couple projects you know and I bet at least one will be an example.
Fortunately, most of these people seem to be well-off (probably in part due to the quality of programming jobs), but every once in a while there's someone who's not so fortunate. It should be more common to sponsor maintainers, especially if they are asking for donations and offer proof that they genuinely need the money. (The world we live in, some people who have plenty fake issues to solicit donations, then others who genuinely need and deserve the money are scolded and left unfunded because of them. So I think it's fine to ask for donations, but be prepared to justify why you need them.)