The blockchain is home to repositories of value-laced recordkeeping, but are we on the verge of witnessing technologists, cypherpunks and hackers swapping tokens for dates? Matchpool, a new decentralized social network has a novel approach to modernizing the age-old ritual of courtship. Adding a high touch approach to a digital environment is made possible by motivating the sharing economy to curate and facilitate matches between peers for use cases such as dating and other social or interest groups.

Matchpool eliminates the traditional network owner and as a substitute participants create “Pools” where the incentive structure is a direct economic relationship between “Users” and “Matchmakers”, facilitated by blockchain technology. In short, users buy in and matchmakers are rewarded for proposing meetups and supplying ice breakers. By comparison, traditional dating applications (both paid and free) provide only access and algorithms to users who are required to summon their personal ambition in order to network. Matchpool has a vision that open systems can nurture collaborative matchmaking and turn communities into vibrant marketplaces for networking.

Matchpool’s protocol will balance more controlled access to sensitive user data, while also enabling pool operators to build geolocal versions of Millionaire Matchmaker, The League, Meetup, Craigslist and more. Users choose which pools to join. The dating use case is just a beachhead market; and for practical purposes, owners can customize and operate pools tied to virtually any interest. Owner-operated pools provide a number of competitive advantages, including unique marketing messages and the opportunity to adhere to the complex location-based nuances and cultural norms for dating and networking.

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Dating is hard work

The value of love and happiness is quite high although theorists generally fail to bridge the worlds of monetary value and love. The reason: it is all relative. Everyone has different means and different values. It is hard to slot love into the economic principle of the Big Mac Index, where costs are factually comparable. Similarly, the cost of Match.com does not equal a users expected value, it is just a cost for the Company to monetize its services. In fact, many traditional online dating companies mathematically formulate a flat monthly or per message cost and participants choose to opt in or not.

Two of the largest investments an individual will make in seeking love are time and money. While relationships and dating are expensive, the money singles spend on expanding their ‘dating funnel’ is shockingly low. Global estimates are hard to come by, but in the U.S. only 1.6% of 18 to 26 year-olds who use dating apps pay for the premium services. Tinder converts just 0.85% of its 35MM users. That is a tiny fraction of a huge market opportunity. For instance, China’s singles population has swelled to over 200MM in 2015, or 14.6% of the country (up from just 6% in 1990). In the U.S. and England ~50% of adults are single.

The explanation may not be a monetary one but a psychological one. Prospecting relationships is a lot of work. The reasons people turn to online dating include “too busy” or “hard to meet people”. So, why pay for dating services unless you are motivated to get to work? Premium services need a better marketing message and value proposition to break into users’ wallets. Matchpool seeks to create more effective introductions by providing monetary incentives to passionate matchmakers for getting to know members and facilitating connections. The idea promotes a message of cooperation and solves pain points within the industry.

The Economic mechanisms

Matchpool’s concept seeks to merge the digital and physical worlds with pools structured by geographies and interests. The system utilizes the blockchain for four main purposes 1) to decentralize ownership and responsibility for operating local communities, 2) to structure ownership and reward schemes on a pool-by-pool basis, 3) to validate and settle transactions and 4) to log historical events. An owner stakes tokens to set up a pool (starting at 120 or ~$8.40 at Token Sale price) and then structures the incentives and parameters for participants to earn rewards. For example, a pool with group of attractive women may include a large monthly fee (for men only), a large reward for matchmakers (to recruit the best) and a ratio of women to men of 2:1 (a favorable ratio for the women). Matchmaking proposals flow as follows: