This blockchain startup will pay you to find love

Rage Review : The new dating service platform Matchpool is different from the traditional random matching method. The platform can use search and filtering strategies like OKCupid to make dating more reliable. The unique selling point (USP) of this service is to combine the elements of traditional matching with the transparency and enforceability of programmable smart contracts, and it also created its own cryptocurrency to attract users to register, achieving the purpose of marketing at a lower cost.

Translation: Nicole

Yonatan Ben Shimon said in a Skype call from Tel Aviv:

“As I researched the dating industry, I discovered that it was expensive to get to a critical mass of users and start a niche dating site.”

“That’s why the dominant sites are one-size-fits-all, but that’s not what most of us want.”

Ben Shimon is the founder and CEO of Matchpool, a new dating service that aims to bring couples together through matchmaking — and in a major 21st century twist, allows the most successful matches to earn cryptocurrency rewards.

The service’s unique selling point (USP) is to combine elements of traditional matching with the transparency and enforceability of programmable smart contracts.

In short, potential matches start a 'pool' - a collection of users with common interests, like a Facebook group - all of which can send private messages to each other to find compatible people.

Pool owners can profit from matchmaking activities in various ways, such as by setting a membership fee or charging based on the number of messages sent.

Additionally, they can keep the group dynamic by setting up smart contracts with enforced ratios between different users: a 50/50 split between men and women, for example, or an even age range. Using search and filtering strategies like OKCupid’s can be a more strategic approach to dating than random pairing.

Not that different

In a Medium post, Ben Shimon writes that pairing is still a common practice in many religious communities and has a long history. But it's also true that most of us no longer live in those communities.

He said:

"I think it does happen, but it's not perfect yet. If you ask your colleagues or friends how they met their significant other, they will say it was through a mutual friend. This kind of environment can make you let down your guard, and if it's a trusted person who introduced us, we suddenly feel very reliable and comfortable."

The idea is that pool owners can help create this atmosphere of trust, at least in part, by facilitating real conversations and providing support to users in the pool.

Of course, even with the best of intentions, trying to engineer a social momentum campaign can be tricky, especially when launching a dating site (or any other kind of social network) when existing competitors have already generated significant network effects.

Encrypted Connection

Faced with these potential challenges, why did Matchpool take on the additional challenge of creating its own cryptocurrency token to back it up?

First, Ben Shimon said the company was attracted to the idea of ​​using blockchain to store user interaction data because records in the system are difficult to change, and he hopes to use this to further build a trust network among users.

Secondly, as has been established in many other cases, if the goal is to reward users with small amounts of money on a regular basis, cryptocurrencies will be an attractive option, especially compared to regular payment processors.

Thirdly, Matchpool’s ‘Guppy’ token will be used to attract users, with 20% of the token supply used to reward newly registered users, which is currently only given to women.

The reason is that dating sites tend to be male-dominated, and while it's difficult to assess specific numbers for all sites, research from the Pew Center found that more men than women use dating sites in the United States.

Ben Shimon says:

“I think if we reward early adopters with real money — which we can’t do with dollars — then we can cheaply overcome the initial hurdle of a lack of network effects.”

PayPal is a company that uses a similar paid sign-up strategy to quickly acquire users.

Market motivation

The effectiveness of this strategy will soon be judged by the results, as token sales (sometimes called initial coin offerings, or ICOs) are scheduled to begin in March with an expected launch date in May.

But one question remains at the end of the interview: What exactly is the motivation behind Ben Shimon’s platform?

Is it possible that he was trying to connect with other people in a way that allowed him to get closer to the girl he had left, as Zuckerberg describes in "The Social Network"?

Now, he thinks it's different.

"You know, it's a tough question... I'm not doing this to find a girl."