Japanese Voter Survey - AIM

The Current State

In Fund 6 there were 292,395 total votes cast by ~44,500 wallets. These impressive numbers represent a 17% increase in votes and a 35% increase in wallets compared to Fund 5.

(Sources: https://forum.cardano.org/t/project-catalyst-fund5-voting-results-official/68424

and

https://forum.cardano.org/t/project-catalyst-fund6-voting-results-official/82084))

However, studies of voting impact suggest that we need to explore improvements to the process to avoid a few members of the community exercising an excessive amount of control over the process.

AIM previously received funding to launch a survey of Fund6 voters to answer the following questions:

What do we know about voter behaviors? Why do some vote for all proposals while some vote only for a few? What else do we want to ask, what else can we know? What could we do with this information?

In order to fulfill the desired goals of distributed governance, we, as a community, will need to work to understand why voters choose to behave in a certain way. The best way to obtain this data is to ask them directly.

The Fund6 incentivized survey was launched in English and received about 300 respondents. AIM is in the process of analyzing the results and will publish the data and the conclusions shortly.

Our Proposal: Japanese Incentivized Voter Survey

The purpose of this proposal is to update and translate the Fund6 Incentivized Voter Survey into Japanese in order to survey up to 300 Japanese-speaking respondents. Ideally this would be an ongoing and evolving undertaking.

The Japanese community has been critical to the initial launch and continued success of the Cardano ecosystem. We aim to gather insights and gain a better understanding of how the Japanese Cardano Community sees, understands and interacts with Catalyst. This information will help the global Catalyst community to improve over time and increase the impact and Return on Intention of the whole process.

Roadmap and Milestones

Since the results of this survey will benefit the whole Catalyst process, we aim at delivering the results as fast as possible after the publication of Fund7 results. The following roadmap outlines our plan:

UpdateFund6 survey for Fund7 and translate into Japanese - January 2022

Promotion of survey - January 2022

Analyze results - February 2022

Produce and share survey results - February 2022

Example Information of Interest

Fund6 Cardano Catalyst Incentivized Voter Survey can be found here: https://forms.gle/6oKuEhfYYoGvQpDK7

Some examples of the kind of information we want to get from this survey include:

What attracted voters to a certain proposal that they voted up or down?

How much research is done on the proposals before they cast their votes?

What is a 'no go' in a proposal?

How much weight do they give to Community Advisor scores?

How much do they know about how Catalyst works?

What did they like and what didn't they like about the voting process - how could it be improved?

Do they vote based on someone else's advice?

What other language do they speak or consider important to serve in the ecosystem?

Team

Cardano AIM (Assembly of Inspired Masses) is an active group of community and tool builders. This project is being headed by made up of, Victor, Phil,, Allison along with the a number of supporters. We are all active Catalyst Community members and currently design and build tools that support the community. These include the popular voter-tool (https://cardanocataly.st/voter-tool/#/), the Community Advisor Tools (CA and vCA-tools) (https://cardanocataly.st/ca-tool/#/ & https://cardanocataly.st/vca-tool/#/)))) as well as the community landing page (https://cardanocataly.st/)

Victor is an active Catalyst Member, Community Advisor and Proposal Mentor, member of the 1st Catalyst Circle, leader of the Catalyst School, core member of the Catalyst Swarm, and has a strong professional and academic background in Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science and Machine Learning.

Phil has experience as an accountant, UI/UX frontend and graphic design and business advisor amongst numerous other pursuits. He currently has a lead position in the development and direction of Cardano AIM and is co-creator of the Community Tools.

Allison has 20+ years of business, accounting, and financial experience including 10 years as a Corporate Banker. She has been involved with Catalyst since Fund0, is a member of the Catalyst Circle v2, is serving on several Catalyst Challenge Teams, and is an active member and Working Group Co-Chair of Switzerland's Crypto Valley Association.

Yuta has hosted or taught at dozens of online and offline meetups / founded and managed 7 Cardano Japanese community chats (up to 2,500 people) / created over 240 YouTube videos / official ambassador / SPO / CPA / Catalyst FUND 2 Proposer. He will be responsible for translating the questionnaire and spreading the information to the Japanese community.

Process

At the end of the voting process a survey will be distributed. We are targeting 100-300 Japanese-speaking participants. In future iterations of the survey, we can calculate and target the statistically ideal number of voters. For now, we are looking to test if the idea is feasible and if the Japanese community/voters will support it.

With this survey, we are testing a lottery mechanism to motivate and incentivize respondents. Fifty randomly-selected participants will receive a portion of the $3000 allocated for incentives, or $60 each. One respondent will receive $500. All incentives will be paid in ADA (calculated based on the time of receipt from the treasury). To ensure the highest quality and value to the community we will look to remove participants from the lottery pool at our discretion if we deem their answers to be nonconstructive.

Success Indicators

1. The survey is undertaken

2. The results are made public

3. Statistical analysis is undertaken

4. Statistical analysis is made public

Budget

Updating of Fund6 survey for Fund7 - $500

Translation of existing Survey into Japanese - $1500

Promotion: $500 - Paid advertising, interviews on Cardano podcasts, time spent engaging in forums, etc.

Statistical analysis: $1000

Results analysis: $500

Graphic Design: $1000 - Presentation of results/marketing material

Administration: $500 - setting up the survey, tracking and distributing results paying participants

Participant rewards: $3500 - Paid to Voters who participate

Total: $9000.

Requested funds in USD 9000