Understanding Blockchain Users
This is a research project I ran for an investment group to help bolster their understanding of the Blockchain and Web3 users through social sensing.
Skills Used:
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Web Scraping
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Social Media Analytics
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Digital Ethnography
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Metric Development
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Reporting
Some information has been removed or modified for confidentiality.
Context & Research Goals
Blockchain and Web3 project news and opinions spread primarily through social media platforms such as Twitter or Reddit. The goal of my research was to leverage big data to understand what caused certain projects to gain momentum and others to flounder, thereby increasing the group's ROI.
Methods
Given the amount of information online , I took a two-pronged approach. I used large-scale quantitative analysis to compare project's influence with users. I also used these methods to identify influencers in the space which I then used qualitative digital ethnography techniques to deepen insights.
Crucial Insights
I provided weekly reports combining the quantitative analysis to give a sense of the broader cryptocurrency market with more fine-grained analyses of projects of interest combined with qualitative insights. The stakeholders gained an understanding of this market and it spurred conversation in the group.
Impact
My work directly led to several successful investments in cryptocurrency projects and shaped the development of their own cryptocurrency project.
Key Learnings
This project allowed me to be creative and flex multiple methods to explore a new space. One thing that I would do differently as this project developed is to conduct more interviews with people just beginning to invest in the space to deepen my insights.
I used web-scraping in R to collect large datasets about different crypto projects.
Using a simple machine learning method, I removed bots and then analyzed sentiment allowing for easy comparison of public sentiment of crypto projects.
Using these methods, I could answer open questions about crypto products and give the group an edge in their investments.
Through digital ethnography, I was able to identify what different crypto communities valued and use these insights to inform the development of their own crypto project.
Another task on this project was to provide foundational research and educate internal stakeholders to develop a common vocabulary amongst the group.
For additional findings and learnings, please contact me at jackmizell12@gmail.com