A serious question(?) about decentralization.

This post is a non-promotional effort to ask a serious decentralization question about profit-making projects. I will do the best I can to be non-promo, thank you.


re: The first ever long-term paid study of Bitcoin Users.
How much to pay people for the study(?), we will need to decide.


The Key Issue:

* For the sake of decentralization: Each of our 10 teams should be able to decide for themselves.
* Since it is a scientific study, breaking it into ten groups with different pay rates, doesn't seem to work.

One possible answer: It is a co-op effort helping the ecosystem, and the ten teams can all benefit from participating without needing to decide the pay rates. Sounds a bit centralized but not too different from what sports leagues do. The central MLB leadership, for example, funded studies and hired an expert former, successful GM & the result was improving the game by eliminating delays.


The remaining issue?

* Sometimes "cooperation for mutual  benefit" (like in Open Source communities) is a good thing.
* On the other hand, we have something big, which needs to be decentralized right away, so now is a great time to start.

Serious Question: I am currently not an expert on Scientific studies, is it possible to "unnecessarily" split the pool of participants into ten groups (so each team is more independent), and still collect useful long-term data? Thank you.