Gauging community interest in supporting a research project: Cryptopolitics - Better Understanding the Beliefs Driving Crypto

Hi all,

Reaching out to see if there might be interest from the community in supporting a research project that is intended to help us get a better understanding of the beliefs driving crypto. With support from Polkadot, we'd make sure to include targeted outreach of the survey to members of the Polkadot community as well as the communities of relevant projects.

We believe that despite the macroeconomic conditions, now is the perfect time to delve into the ideologies that are most prevalent in web3. Especially as people might be flocking away from the space, whether due to the amount of buzz around AI/LLM's or general news, it's important to get a clearer sense of what drives those who are sticking around. We've added the current proposal below and would be happy to answer any questions/provide more color.

Context of the proposal:

Metagov is submitting a ‘Community events and outreach’ bounty to advance our work on the Cryptopolitical Typology Quiz and the resulting takeaways after being encouraged to do so by Polkadot contributors.

We first put this study together in order to educate the Web3 community and to help it better understand itself.

Vitalik’s thoughts on the Cryptopolitical Typology Quiz.

The total allocation requested for the grant from the Polkadot ecosystem is 13,000 DOT (~$75,000) to be the initial funder.
The total cost of this grant is $225,000 and Metagov is currently seeking 3 funders at the $75,000 level to drive this project forward.

Total Ask for Web3 Foundation

• $75,000 out of the $225,000 total needed to run this project

**Tasks (more details below) **

• Engage polling specialist and research assistants to develop and run surveys
• Engage a data science for analysis of surveys
• Produce a report, blog posts, and social media posts related to the results
• Present findings at relevant conferences

**Timelines **

• Apr-May 2023 - secure funding, start recruitment
• Jun-Sep 2023 - recruit talent, produce surveys, run surveys, perform initial analysis
• Oct-Nov 2023 - seek informal peer review and make any relevant updates to analysis, as well as any remaining data collection if needed
• Nov 2023-Feb 2024 - publish formal and informal versions of results, present at conferences

More details on how what the funds will be used for:

• Engage a Polling Specialist to enhance the quality of data collection / to mimic the polling quality of Pew Research ($75k)

• Rigorous sampling strategy

• In the first iteration of cryptopolitics, a survey was developed by the Metagov team and quickly released for data gathering

• In this instance, we want to work with survey design excerpts to craft a more nuanced survey

• The sampling strategy would involve creating a more thorough plan on how to find and attract the widest range of respondents as possible in order to avoid the survey being administered in communities where there is a high concentration of individuals who think similarly

• Commission a company to help administer a large scale survey

• Engage a Data Scientist to perform analytics on the newly collected data and provide outputs that can be shared with both the funders as well as the general public ($35k)

• Engage a Research Assistant (RA) to assist with the survey development, data collection, and research throughout the duration of the project ($20k)

• Allocate funds for incentives for high-volume data collection (e.g. gift card, NFT, etc. - something to provide a more salient personal incentive for individuals to fill out the revised survey) ($15k)

• Travel to present the findings at conferences and events, both in terms of Web3 as well as relevant academic conferences ($20k)

• The specific conferences will depend on timing of funding, but we are currently considering the following events for both preliminary and final results:

• Science of Blockchain Conference at Stanford

• MCON in Denver

• TBC Devconnect Week in Q4 2023

• TBC RMIT Conference in December 2023

• TBC academic conferences in Q1 & @ 2024 (e.g. CMU, Georgetown, MIT, Harvard)

• ETH Denver 2024

• Devcon 2024

• Marketing, materials, audio/video resources, and other costs associated with sharing the findings more widely ($10k)

• This will include:

• Academic preprint via arXiv, Cryptoeconomics Conference, Stanford Science of Blockchain Conference, and other relevant academic conferences where research can be presented

• Social media campaigns via twitter

• Relevant communities via telegram and discord

• CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, or similar crypto-focused news outlet

• Podcasts: Bankless, Green Pilled, Epicenter, etc.

• Relevant industry forums, as well as the forums of our funding organizations

• Metrics of success:

• Getting 5k+ views on the Medium post with informal results

• Getting 1k+ views on the version on arXiv

• Being accepted to present at 3+ academic conferences

• Being featured on a crypto-news publication

• Metagov research leadership and internal support ($47.5k)

• Executive Director & Lead PI - ($20k of the $47.5k)

• 300 hours

• Overhead and additional support - ($27.5k of the $47.5k)

• Director of Operations and Partnerships - 100 hours

• Community Manager - 100 hours

• RAs - 300 hours

Problem statement: what problem is this proposal trying to solve? If no problems are being solved, which topics does the bounty cover? Make it as granular as possible to allow token holders to understand the logic behind it.

Web3 is still a young space. Having more clarity on who is actually building the space can help both understand the space better and, more importantly, be able to coordinate and build more efficiently. Since going through the first iteration, we believe that a more robust data set, featuring more in-depth questions, a demographic panel, and a more rigorous sampling strategy will help support:

• better decision-making by L1s and other major Web3 organizations, especially as it relates to community and ecosystem initiatives,
• better understanding of the diversity of populations in the blockchain / Web3 ecosystem, including at traditional media publications,
• more comparative analyses of “soft” aspects of L1 governance and political economy such as culture, and
• ongoing regulatory discussions taking place. Historical data would also help capture the evolving nature of the Web3 community for academic and historical purposes.

With support from the Polkadot ecosystem, we would also be very interested in expanding the question bank to explore questions important to Polkadot. We need to identify the right partner within Polkadot to work with us on this.

**Proposal Objective/solution/s to point 2: What is the goal of the bounty? What does 'success' look like? **
The goal of this bounty is to collect and analyze data that can provide richer insights for the space in terms of the prevalent ideologies. As outlined above, the results from such an in-depth survey can provide information that can help with community building, improving governance, and understanding some of the political and cultural tensions that arrive within the space.
Success for this project would entail collecting a dataset of at least 3,000 responses over three months in order to have a more statistically significant result. Additionally, by engaging a Polling Specialist and a Data Scientist, the rigor of the survey itself will be improved for both this and future versions. Given that part of our goal is to collect this data again in the future, with the focus of this grant specifically being the survey revision and second iteration of data collection, it is important to appropriately invest in the talent that can help create a tool that will be useful for years to come.

Thanks,

Eugene, Head of Ops & Partnerships @ Metagov