Why is it important?
There are 1.8 billion young people aged 10-24 in the world—the largest youth population ever. Of these, 600 million are adolescent girls and young women.
**“The digital skills gap is one of the major deficits that many developing, least developed and small state economies are challenged with. The most affected from these digital divide are women across and within countries. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report, it will take another 267.6 years to close the gender gap for women’s economic participation. The pandemic has worsened this as economies have contracted and unemployment has risen. The worst impacted are the women who are employed in the non-digital sectors in micro small and medium (MSME) enterprises such as in tourism, textiles, handicrafts, processed food and agriculture sector. Furthermore, most of the women are employed in MSME sectors of the economy that were unorganized or informal in nature. As such the lack of capacity, knowledge on IT skills and digitalisation have affected these segments of society. As such there is a need to empower women through leveraging digital infrastructure to address digital divide through training and capacity building. E-commerce and digital marketing are tools which can be useful for bridging this gap as during COVID-19 period most businesses transacted using these platforms.” - The Commonwealth
The poll by Binance 2021 (data collected in October 2020 across 178 countries) indicated that women are only 5% of the total number of crypto users worldwide.
https://research.binance.com/static/pdf/Global_Crypto_Index_2021.pdf
Youth and women digital natives, and those seeking to connect to the digital economy today are going to be the users of blockchain and crypto tomorrow. However, youth and women aren’t included nor involved, at scale, in Project Catalyst; the world’s largest DAO, and experiment in on-chain governance and innovation, let alone in the entire crypto and blockchain ecosystem. This can be addressed, leading to participation from youth and women in cross chain collaborations, and bridging within Cardano communities and all levels of Catalyst.
Youth and women are the future tech advocates. The next generation of blockchain advocates, and upcoming blockchain natives.
- The gap is currently an unmet need - the blockchain space is not accessible to all youth and women due to a multitude of socio-economic, and cultural factors.
- Most coursework is advanced + protocol communities can be difficult to enter/engage with at the beginning, as they are predominantly male and so communicate and exchange in ways and places that are more suited and comfortable for them
- New information is often directed towards a developer community/working professionals — there is a need to be more inclusive in sharing and brainstorming on these new technologies, across chains.
“At the beginning of their journey in the cryptosphere, most women would like to have more educational materials (72.8%).”https://bdc.consulting/insights/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-under-female-thumb-global-study-women-cryptosphere
In 2019, women accounted for about 8% of all crypto users - https://bdc.consulting/insights/cryptocurrency/survey-crypto-traders
— Research from Financial Conduct Authority (the UK, data compiled at the end of 2019) showed that 21% of UK crypto users were women. https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/research-note-cryptoasset-consumer-research-2020.pdf
— In the same year in the United States, women accounted for about 26% of crypto users, according to the crypto exchange Gemini. https://www.gemini.com/state-of-us-crypto
At the same time, more and more companies claim that the number of women among their users is growing.
— CoinMarketCap: During the first quarter of 2020, the number of female users grew by 43.24% over the previous quarter.
— Cardify: In January 2021, women made 15% of cryptocurrency deposits, up from 5.6% a year earlier.
— Robinhood: In 2021, the number of female crypto traders increased by 7 times.
However, very little attention is paid to why women come to the crypto sphere and what is important for them in cryptocurrencies (no stereotyping). Some information can be found in the article describing the study Grayscale Investments (2019), but the original text of the report is no longer available.
The largest number of women crypto users who took part in the survey are individuals aged from 25 to 34, with a slightly broader basis from 18 to 44.
(Image - Age of Respondents)
According to the survey results, the appearance of an “inspirer” or informant from a personal environment (a friend, a husband, a colleague, etc.) most often brings women into crypto. This is true for every third respondent (36.7%).
(Image - Main Events That Motivated Them to Engage With Crypto)
The importance of personal networks influencing gender imbalance is often underestimated by men, but women admit how important it is for them. In sociology, this is called homophily – a tendency to communicate with people like yourself.
“Men often ask me why more women aren’t interested in Bitcoin and digital assets. I tend to ask them this question in response: who first told you about Bitcoin, and, in your daily life, who do you find yourself discussing crypto with? Answers often reveal that men tend to raise this subject matter with other men, far more than they do with women, and I believe that this tendency makes a significant difference to the gender balance at community meetups, in online forums, and to the shape of the industry as a whole.”
– Chloe White, National Blockchain Roadmap Lead
What could help women befriend the cryptosphere?
According to the narration of focus group participants, the following actions will help to attract more women to the crypto sphere. (For BDC Consulting recommendations, see the conclusions.)
1. Create training courses and educational materials tailored to the women’s needs:
- Highlight bonuses that interaction with cryptocurrencies can bring them
- Focus low entry threshold,
- Indicate the possibility of investing small amounts of money,
- Show how to gain returns on investments with low risks,
- Provide clear examples (‘take by the hand and show’)
“I think it is related to education. Education on the specific subject, not general education. I think if they open their ears and eyes to listen and see how easy it can be because it’s not quantum physics. It is difficult, it is complicated, it is something new but it is doable’. (Greece)
NFTs
Love them or hate them, NFTS are appearing more and more in mainstream media and are here to stay for the foreseeable future. But currently we are just at the tip of the iceberg in unlocking its potential to revolutionize global systems and daily realities. Take the example of Veritree, Cardano Trees and the Cardano Forest. The mix of Cardano’s blockchain, NFTs, and real world impact and solutions for tackling climate change.
With crypto and blockchains coming under the spotlight based on their technical makeups, impact on the environment, and ability to radically transform the financial situations for millions of lives, it is paramount that the Cardano community step up as leaders, role models and collaborators in the mission to solve wicked problems, using blockchain and its related tech, for good. Cross-chain collaboration is essential for this to happen at scale.
Creatives who work making and selling NFTs across chains are positioned to be potentially suitable role models in engaging with youth and women, external to chains and across chains. Through creative means, intermingled with complex technology, what can be underneath complex, can appear simple. With tried and tested project based learning approaches, our programme will give participants access to develop the soft and hard skills, and community connections to flourish and be guides for those who will follow in their footsteps.
NFTs and those who work with them for a living provide a facilitated entry point for women and youth to enter the cryptosphere, cross chain digital economy, and a world of new concepts and unimaginable opportunities.
We propose to gather together the Cardano impact community, blockchain for good stakeholders, and nft4good creatives. To collaborate and co-design an educational programme with and for women and youth.
(This content will be summarized into Tik Tok videos by facilitators, mentors, and participants. Classes will be live streamed and recorded in Twitch, as there is a huge untapped market of youth that are active in Twitch and Tik Tok as shown in market studies with statistics:
Twitch - https://influencermarketinghub.com/twitch-stats/
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitch-statistics/
Tik Tok - https://blog.hootsuite.com/tiktok-stats/)
Bringing together our diverse global community of creatives, technical professionals, open source practitioners, to bridge the digital divide in knowledge, awareness and collaboration across chains.
The key to a sustainable, prosperous and equitable world for all requires all hands on deck. Key to this is education and open source solutions, with strong partnerships and collaboration. The future is multi-chain. A measure of progress and success will be how included women and youth are, at all levels in the blockchain for good space. The Cardano community has the chance to be a leader in this regard.
Opportunity:
Why is the problem solvable?
Educational resources do exist but are not tailored to youth and women, at scale, with cross chain collaboration to avoid duplication and working in silos to solve common problems i.e climate change.
The blockchain conversation is not inclusive of youth and women at large - widening the dialogue around it is key, and needs to happen at a wider scale.
What would the world look like if our team solved it?
The world would have a dedicated open-source platform that provides direct access to interact with the Cardano ecosystem, and discuss emerging technologies/models of community governance across blockchains, under common themes, with forums, hubs and interconnected networks of collective intelligence. Empowered and equipped leaders have risen up, through grassroots decentralized and organized movements of positive change, to be role models for youth and women locally and globally.
Some statistics for context:
How big is the potential target audience?
Looking at the distribution of internet users worldwide as of 2019, by youth age 18-24 was 18% of the total internet users globally. This means that 4.1 billion of our global population are connected. 738 million youth make up our potential market.
<https://www.statista.com/statistics/272365/age-distribution-of-internet-users-worldwide/>
<https://www.itu.int/hub/2021/11/facts-and-figures-2021-2-9-billion-people-still-offline/>
French people under 35 years old's perspectives on cryptocurrencies 2019.
People under 35 years old's perspectives on cryptocurrencies in France in June 2019: “Overall, French people under 35 years old had a positive opinion on cryptocurrencies: 43 percent of them believed that cryptocurrencies were a good thing, while 31 percent of them believed they were a bad thing. Among those seeing cryptocurrencies as positive, 33 percent viewed them as a good thing and ten percent considered them as a really good thing.” - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1073810/cryptocurrency-people-under-35-opinion-france/
This is pre-pandemic. With Binance seeking to headquarter in France, and the creation of an innovation hub in France with the granting of 100m EUROS, the trends indicate that youth will most definitely play a pivotal role in shaping the future of blockchain and crypto usage. Cardano and the Catalyst community has an opportunity to position itself as a leading choice for youth who are increasingly aware and concerned with being actively involved in activities and projects that have a positive environmental and social impactful. - https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/b11c6f68e581478bae0867146af4c258
43% of men ages 18 to 29 say they have, according to a survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults from Pew Research carried out in 2021. - <https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/11/16-of-americans-say-they-have-ever-invested-in-traded-or-used-cryptocurrency/>
Cryptocurrency is most popular with young adults: 31% of people ages 18 to 29 have used it, compared to 21% of people ages 30 to 49, 8% of people ages 50 to 64 and 3% of people age 65 or over.
Our solution:
We lower the barriers of entry into the blockchain for impact space, onboarding youth and women into the Cardano Catalyst Community, from across chains.
This will happen with our team continuing their activities in community building and network growth for a common vision and mission to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals for instance, and bring about a more equitable world for all.
With an educational, innovative leadership programme, gathering youth and women in physical and digital spaces designed by them, for them, the network can grow and collective intelligence will magnify. Thus, enabling youth and women to connect meaningfully, from outside the blockchain world,and across chains, with blockchain professionals, and access professional guidance and expert mentorship, through social dialogue, new opportunities are created, with synergies that catalyze collaborative positive feedback loops.
The magnitude for positive impact in the blockchain for good space, of which the Cardano community and Project Catalyst plays a pivotal role, depends on meaningful participation from not just proposers, advisors, mentors and voters who are both eager and capable to fulfill their roles and understand their responsibilities, but from all of us, so that includes those who currently sit on the fringes or are outside the bubble that is crypto and blockchain.
We plan to onboard these youth + women members into our Youth Block community, which connects this proposal with our Youth Block.
Youth Block Open Source Education - F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem
<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/404951>
Onboarding Under-represented Youth - F8: New Member Onboarding
<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398912>
(Attached to the proposal is the Youth Block Deck)
Youth and women globally should be involved in the shaping of this space and designing the technology. Their voices must be listened to in the ongoing conversation of the future of blockchain for good, and Cardano.
Key Metrics to measure:
Mainnet and testnet transaction volume growth
- With the growth in the number of enabled, empowered and equipped youth and women in the blockchain space, across chains, this metric should grow.
Number of proposals including participants from other blockchain communities
- With regular meetups and organized events and spaces for dialogue for youth and women of multichain communities, Project Catalyst should receive proposals from diverse teams with a multichain background.
Number of technical implementations connecting Cardano to other blockchains
- Like they say 2 heads are better than 1! With a gathering of multi skilled individuals from various blockchain communities, different perspectives and problem solving ideas will inevitably collide to spark new initiatives and solutions.
Ideas from other chains implemented by Catalyst
- With Project Catalyst open to embodying diversity and inclusion, and welcoming proposals from individuals and teams irrespective of background and technical skillset, the strength, and quality of the proposal shall remain the key focus for granting merit and funding. This news will spread through word of mouth and networks. Interoperability will become more than a buzzword. It will become the norm.
Projects and dApps from other chains implemented on Cardano
- This metric can be measured by way of research surveys and data collection, which this proposal includes in its solution.
Catalyst-created solutions adopted by other chains/communities
- With a diverse multichain teams, the design of solutions will more likely have a multi chain vision from the outset, and the means of spreading ideas through other communities will be facilitated given that each team represents their respective blockchain community.
Number of events / workshops / sessions arranged with other communities
- This can easily be tracked and collaborative events/workshops/sessions that already occur within the Cardano community, can be pitched and designed with the view of being more diverse and inclusive of multiple blockchain communities, youth and women. Understanding the barriers for youth and women, and other blockchain communities to join such events hosted by Cardano, or vice versa, will be crucial to overcome this challenge. The research cited earlier helps in this regard.
Number of permanent initiatives with cross-chain teams (members from different blockchain communities together)
- Making regular meetups, and proposing a Catalyst challenge category to support cross-chain teams, will prove crucial.
Additional KPIs for key events/meetings/teams proposing in Catalyst
- # youth participation
- #women participation
- # team members from multi chains
Other approaches exist and have been tried, to name a few:
Unite2030, Surge <https://www.unicef.org/innovation/SURGE>
Crypto Kids camp (https://www.cryptokidscamp.org)
Blockchain Kids (https://blockchainkids.net)
However, our competitive advantages are :
-
We aim to offer a program for all youth and women, and plan to have a lead on each continent, multilingual program, transformative education
-
What is distinctive about our approach and team organization is:
-
We aim to have a Lead on each continent, mentorship for each member while taking part in the program, help accessing Project Catalyst
How will we ensure sustainability beyond Catalyst initial funding if successfully funded?
If successfully funded via Catalyst, we will continue our research within our network of mission driven stake pool operators, and scope the possibility to generate rewards every epoch (5 days) 5-6% of total stake each year (<https://cardano.org/calculator/>), and create a learn to earn model.