The 10 Tribes of Crypto

Many radical deliberation crypto is afloat of flinty libertarians and Shiba-chasing degens. But anyone who’s hung astir crypto for a portion knows that the assemblage is beauteous divers – some politically and economically. There are builders, gig workers, leftists, meme-lords, grannies and everything successful between. In this post, we’ll yet enactment immoderate numbers connected that diversity.

Joshua Tan, Lucia Korpas, and Ann Brody are researchers astatine Metagov, a governance probe collective.

In what follows, we contiguous archetypal takeaways from the Cryptopolitical Typology Quiz, an 18-question online survey we launched astatine LisCon 2021 that studies the political-economic inclinations of the crypto community. The survey features 10 factions and 4 classes (full descriptions here) arsenic good arsenic a acceptable of Cryptopolitics non-fungible tokens.

Note: This station presents preliminary information from the Cryptopolitical Typology Quiz. If you haven’t done truthful already, we highly urge taking the quiz, and if you bask it, sharing it on Twitter. If you’d similar to skip the takeaways and spot the information for yourself, you tin spot a unrecorded summary of the results from the survey successful this Typeform report. The last results from the survey volition beryllium published aboriginal successful 2022.

The archetypal happening you mightiness announcement astir the quiz are the factions.

The apical enactment of factions (crypto-leftist, DAOist, existent neutral, crypto-libertarian, crypto-ancap) captures the spectrum of governmental beliefs successful crypto; these factions are calculated from a acceptable of questions based connected Pew Research Center’s long-running Political Typology Quiz.

The bottommost enactment (earner, cryptopunk, NPC, techtrepreneur, degen) represents the superior mode of economical engagement with crypto.

Finally, determination are 4 “classes” (Szabian, Gavinist, Zamfirist and Walchian) not shown that seizure people’s beliefs astir governance and authorities regulation. (That is, aft Nick Szabo, Gavin Wood, Vlad Zamfir and Angela Walch.)

We crowdsourced these archetypal factions from a wide scope of radical (a fewer that didn’t marque the cut: crypto-ancoms, cypherpunks, crypto-feudalists). You tin find afloat descriptions of the factions here. Based connected their responses to the survey, each responsive was assigned a governmental faction, an economical faction and a governance class.

Crypto is commonly associated with right-libertarian politics, and the bulk of survey respondents person so been libertarian oregon the much extremist anarcho-capitalist successful their governmental faction. However, it is besides important to retrieve that determination is unthinkable governmental diverseness wrong crypto communities: Some developers are pro-capitalist libertarians, portion others are anti-capitalist anarchists and socialist.

Despite the preponderance of crypto-libertarians and crypto-ancaps, lone 5.9% of respondents identified arsenic blimpish oregon close wing, portion 51.6% identified arsenic wide oregon near wing, and 42.6% identified arsenic neither. One mentation for this is that galore libertarian respondents whitethorn subordinate the connection “conservative” with societal conservatism, whereas crypto-libertarianism emphasizes a signifier of economical libertarianism. In aboriginal versions of the survey, we would similar to comparison responses crossed geographic regions, since the meanings of “conservative” and “liberal” alteration importantly by portion (e.g. Europe vs. United States).

Governance is simply a contentious contented some wrong and betwixt blockchains, and particularly wherever it involves existing regulatory oregon ineligible authorities. Respondents’ opinions are particularly divided connected whether they favour on-chain implicit off-chain governance: While implicit fractional of respondents were connected the Gavinist oregon Szabian “on-chain” broadside of the scale, astir 40% fell connected the different side. The much utmost positions (Szabians, eschewing off-chain authorities altogether and Walchians, steadfast connected the request for authorities regulation) relationship for astir a 3rd of respondents.

One astonishing result: In question 16, lone a precise tiny percent of radical successful crypto contiguous (3.2%) look to hold with Satoshi Nakomoto’s archetypal imaginativeness of a protocol mostly governed by a acceptable of halfway developers and method unit (which is still, successful galore ways, an close statement of however changes and improvements are rolled retired connected some Bitcoin and Ethereum). That’s little than the percent of radical (3.4%) who deliberation that a accepted authorities should govern the blockchain!

On the economical side, the statement of techtrepeneur – idiosyncratic funny successful gathering oregon contributing to economical applications of crypto – describes implicit two-thirds of respondents. While it is large to spot truthful galore builders successful crypto, we judge this indicates that the survey has not (yet!) reached a typical illustration of the wide crypto community.

After all, a vanishing 2% of respondents were degens – YOLO profit-maximalists who conscionable privation crypto to spell high. Even erstwhile we excavation into the questions that observe for degeneracy, we spot lone 7.2% responding with “My extremity successful crypto is to marque arsenic overmuch wealth arsenic possible” (Q4), 3.5% responding with “In bid to grow, the crypto ecosystem should: Provide fiscal instruments for maximum wealthiness creation” (Q9) and 8.5% responding with “I’m present for: the airdrops” (Q17). To number arsenic a degen, you had to take astatine slightest 2 retired of the 3 answers above.

Where are you, you lovable degens?

We built the archetypal acceptable of factions by hand, but we were funny whether different factions and features mightiness originate people from the data. So we deed the information utilizing a clump of clustering methods (e.g. affinity propagation, agglomerative clustering) and diagnostic enactment methods (e.g. PCA, diagnostic agglomeration). It turns retired that if you inquire n radical successful crypto astir their opinions connected crypto, you’ll get (nearly) n unsocial responses… astatine slightest erstwhile n = 500. While that doesn’t preclude clusters of sentiment from forming, it whitethorn origin into wherefore the clustering results are presently inconclusive. You tin check our enactment here.

Honestly, this effect was astonishing to america – is determination truly nary consolidation of governmental opinions successful crypto? For now, we’re hoping that much information volition assistance america place chiseled schools of thought successful the community. (So if you haven’t already, delight take the quiz oregon share it with your community!) We’re besides funny if different information scientists tin gully antithetic conclusions from the data, possibly by combining it with different information sets. If you deliberation of something, reach out!

Below are immoderate further observations from the survey. Check retired the live summary connected Typeform to spot if these observations clasp existent arsenic much radical implicit the survey.

• What does crypto mean to you? A tiny bulk (56.6%) of respondents see crypto to beryllium chiefly a governmental philosophy/lifestyle, alternatively than chiefly an economical exertion (Q3). This amazed us, particularly erstwhile compared with the proportionality of builders (versus users, artists, memers, etc.) represented successful the survey!

• Bitcoin versus Ethereum: respondents were fixed the accidental to affiliate with a fig of furniture 1 protocols. We compared the responses for the 2 largest groupings, Ethereum and Bitcoin, and recovered that (1) they hold connected astir things, (2) the question they astir disagreed connected was connected gender: Fewer Bitcoiners than Ethereans judge that crypto has a sex occupation (Q15). Bitcoiners were besides somewhat much apt to beryllium skeptical of regularisation (Q7) and, correspondingly, little apt to beryllium funny successful cooperating with regulatory efforts oregon acrophobic with ineligible compliance (Q14).

• Is crypto-economics fair? Respondents are polarized connected the question of whether crypto teams marque a just and tenable magnitude of nett oregon excessively overmuch nett (Q11), and similarly, whether the economical strategy successful crypto is mostly just to astir of its participants oregon unfairly favors almighty interests (Q12).

• How mightiness crypto evolve? The bulk sentiment is that to grow, crypto should physique utile exertion that solves existent problems for a acceptable of users (Q9).

The anonymized responses to the Cryptopolitical Typology Quiz are hosted wrong Govbase, an unfastened information warehouse for online governance. If you’d similar to research the data, consciousness escaped to commencement with this Jupyter notebook.

We request much degens! In short:

• We’re looking for much data, particularly from the Bitcoin community

• We’re looking for partners: Do you person a radical of radical that would payment from taking the survey together? We would emotion to enactment comparisons similar Solana vs Gitcoin, Uniswap vs. SushiSwap, etc.

We initially built this quiz successful bid to amended the crypto assemblage and to assistance it recognize itself. We besides deliberation that this information volition person an interaction connected regulatory discussions, and we would emotion to enactment with organizations already successful this abstraction to tailor aboriginal versions of the survey for that purpose.

Speaking of aboriginal versions, we’d emotion to tally a 2nd iteration of the survey successful 2022 with a much rigorous sampling strategy and a slope of demographic questions. That would springiness america a overmuch amended consciousness of who is progressive successful crypto, arsenic good arsenic humanities information connected crypto’s governmental economy. Sampling this mode tin get expensive, though, truthful we’d emotion to spouse with different projects successful this abstraction (shill, shill). Not lone would you beryllium supporting a nationalist bully successful the ecosystem, the survey could besides treble arsenic assemblage probe for your task (e.g. comparing the cultures of Solana vs. Ethereum, oregon of Uniswap vs. SushiSwap).

We would similar to convey Michael Zargham, Seth Frey, Lane Rettig, Ellie Rennie, Kelsie Nabben, Scott Moore and Ivan Fartunov for their adjuvant comments successful the improvement of this project. We would particularly similar to convey Joe Hirsch, who produced the illustrations for the Cryptopolitics NFTs. The Cryptopolitical Typology Quiz is simply a task of the Metagovernance Project, with morals support from the University of Oxford.