By Jackie Berardo

To contribute to this ongoing research, respond to the following survey: Needs and Obstacles in Web3. Contact jackieberardo@gmail.com for access to the anonymized dataset and collaboration requests.

At Surge, our mission is to onboard the next 100 million women and non-binary individuals to Web3. In July 2022, we conducted a survey with 148 respondents representative of our community of approximately 30,000 to understand what needs and obstacles disproportionately impact women in crypto (‘Web3’). 

We’re publishing our results publicly:

1. Surge’s population is approximately 79% female or nonbinary individuals

2. Men were 2x as likely to identify as crypto experts

3. Women were 1.2x as likely to express interest in ‘creating’ vs. ‘using’ in crypto

4. Our community’s greatest need is ‘being made aware of emerging [crypto] applications’

5. Our community’s greatest obstacle is ‘navigating highly technical crypto products’

Qualitatively, respondents described three, more specific challenges in crypto [in response to ‘[Optional] What other challenges do you consistently experience in crypto?’]:

1. Discovery, Communication: participants, unprompted, described frustrations with discovering and vetting new decentralized applications or tokens within communities using words including ‘Twitter’, ‘media’, ‘people’, and ‘documentation’ in high frequencies (5+ per phrase).

2. Consideration, Trust: trust-oriented obstacles were referenced using words including ‘rugs’, ‘fomo’, ‘skepticism’, ‘misinformation’, ‘value’, and ‘quality’ 5+ times by the survey respondents, in contexts meant to communicate frustrations with making decisions about products and services.

3. Technical accessibility: ‘jargon’, ‘illiterate’, ‘technical’, and ‘confusing’ were referenced 4+ times to identify, specifically, the state of UI/UX in web3 and crypto as a primary challenge.

CONTEXT

Consumer Crypto Products That Win Will Study Women

Studying women in crypto makes financial sense. 

Why? If the demographic trends of our present have any bearing on the future digital economy, the preferences of female and nonbinary individuals will play an outsized role: 

1. Women drive 80% of consumer spending in the United States, yet account for just 19% of transactions in cryptocurrencies as of 2021.

2. It’s estimated that 50% of consumer spending decisions are identity-oriented. 

3. Studies conducted in 2022 indicate that our youngest generations (Generation Z) value digital identity as much, or more, than physical identity. 

If future generations’ spending patterns correlate, even vaguely, to the present, the demographic most likely to dominate consumer spending in our future digital economy is understudied and underserved 4x. It’s women. 

CORE INSIGHTS 

The Surge Women Community is Female, Crypto-Literate, and Creation-Oriented

As of October 2022, the Surge Women community denotes approximately 30,000 women, nonbinary, and male individuals, including approximately 2,500 individual tokenholders, 13,000 Twitter followers, 7,500 Discord community members, 7,000 newsletter subscribers, and 3,000 Instagram followers. The community sum is an estimation of unique accounts. 

The 148 survey respondents were recruited using Discord, email newsletter, and Twitter direct messages. Each participant was incentivized with lottery compensation to mitigate population bias. 

Using the 148 survey respondents as a representative sample, we find that the Surge population as of September 2022 is:

1. Representative of the female demographic

   a. Gender Breakdown: 76% female, 3% nonbinary, and 21% male

2. Primarily ‘mid-level’, or ‘crypto-literate’

   a. Crypto-literacy: 70.1% crypto-literate, 19% expert, 11% beginner

3. Equally ‘creation’ and ‘use’-minded

   a. 61.2% interested in ‘using’ crypto products, 38.8% in ‘creating’

Needs and Obstacles Faced by the Community 

Discovery, Education, and Social Challenges in Crypto Are Pressing

The first behavioral question was designed to assess what respondents’ greatest unmet or underserved ‘needs’ are in crypto. Respondents indicated the following three needs to be most challenging for themselves or their customers on a weekly basis: 

1. Discovery: 57.1% of respondents selected “Being made aware of emerging applications, ideas, or use cases”. 

2. Education: 42.2% of respondents selected “Teaching others about emerging applications and crypto concepts”.

3. Social: 39.5% of respondents identified “Documenting or showcasing my experience with crypto”.

Purchasing, Storing of Personal Addresses, or Creating or Using a Digital Wallet Like Metamask Are Not Frequent Challenges to Crypto-Literate

Surge’s population is primarily crypto-literate. ‘Purchasing of cryptocurrencies’, ‘Storing of personal addresses’, and ‘Creating or using a digital wallet like metamask’ were challenges disproportionately selected by self-identified crypto-beginners, but not the crypto-literate. As a result, Surge’s population rarely selected these needs as challenges. Find more detail below: 

Few crypto-literate participants selected the following to be most challenging on a regular basis: 

1. Crypto Purchasing: 21.1% of respondents selected “Purchasing or distributing cryptocurrencies”.

2. Personal Keys Storage: 12.9% of respondents selected “Storing personal addresses or pass phrases”.

3. Digital Wallets: 16.3% of respondents identified “Creating, using, or understanding a digital wallet like Metamask, Rainbow, or Coinbase”.

Variances in Responses by Gender

Men Were More Likely to Identify as Experts, Women Were More Likely to Identify as Creators

As hypothesized, men were 2x more likely to identify as experts, however, contrary to hypotheses, women were 1.2x more likely than men to report interest in creating vs. using crypto products.

That said, nearly equal proportions of men and female and nonbinary individuals identified as beginners.

The Burden of Crypto Education May Fall Disproportionately on Women 

Whereas Discovery and Education needs were referenced as a need relatively equally regardless of gender, women referenced education, and specifically “Teaching others about emerging applications and use cases” 1.4X as often as men. 

OPPORTUNITY

The crypto industry should be building for the creators and users of the future, of which women are likely to compose 50% vs. the approximately 19% active today, and a potentially outsized proportion of spend.

In other words - women and nonbinary individuals may represent the most pressing opportunity in consumer crypto.