Despite the growing number of dating sites and apps, singles still prefer to turn to matchmakers, new findings show. So security-laden cryptocurrency platforms can excel in the sector.
Need for vetting
According to a recent report by Channel News Asia, plenty of singles in Singapore, for example, prefer joining a dating agency or enlisting the help of a professional matchmaker despite dating apps having become increasingly attractive platforms to seek love and friendship.
Social Development Network, that accredits dating agencies, notes that the number of events organized by these agencies had risen by 23 percent in 2015. Correspondingly, the event participation rate in 2016 increased by 21 percent to 15,393 participants.
Irish traditional matchmaker, Gus Martyn, shares a similar view, saying that demand for the service of a matchmaker from all over Ireland is now huge. Also, Fox 10 reports that though online dating apps like Tinder, Grindr and OKCupid are spreading, some singles are putting the phone down for a more traditional way of turning to a matchmaker to find love.
Some of the factors that made the role of matchmakers become more important include the shock and disappointment several online dating users have faced and the growing need for vetting due to the high level of misrepresentation that has permeated the system.
So what will make cryptocurrency-backed matchmaking platforms such as Matchpool be more relevant today?
Trust and transparency
Crypto-backed platforms are generally built on Blockchain networks such as Ethereum which also allows the use of smart contract features. The system enables automated and trustless interactions over the network without concentrating power to maintain order centrally but spread throughout the network and in the hands of the users.
As matchmaking apps put the security, identity and community management of their platforms under the user’s purview, it ensures a greater level of trust giving them the assurance that the value they create stays in their hands.
This demonstration of trust, coupled with the level of additional transparency that cryptocurrencies bring through being hosted on the Blockchain, will bode well for the growing matchmaking sector.
Decentralization
Crypto-based matchmaking apps guarantee a level of privacy that dating apps cannot provide as well as an intensive human touch because of their decentralized nature. According to the lead developer of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, Blockchains are politically and architecturally decentralized - no one controls them and they have no infrastructural central point of failure - but they are logically centralized (one commonly agreed on state and the system behaves like a single computer).
Some of its usefulness include that decentralized systems are less likely to fail accidentally, they are more expensive to attack and destroy or manipulate because they lack sensitive central points and the low possibility of its participants to collude to act in ways that benefit them at the expense of others.
Incentive
Founder of Matchpool, Yonatan Ben Shimon, notes:
“In the broader sense, every human interaction needs trust. That trust can be achieved by a mutual friend and we reward people to share their network for all sorts of purposes that involve human interaction and which require trust. It can be between employees and employers, or loving couple or even to order a plumber. We enable people to utilize their close bonds on one hand in order to help others and let other people connect with people like them on the other hand much easily and smoothly for all kind of purposes.”
Matchmaking apps seek to modernize the centuries-old profession of matching people with shared common values. A great addition is their ability to create an incentive-based community that could provide motivation to the matchmakers as they introduce people to one another for a real bond. This new idea will improve the success in courting singles particularly those above 30 who tend to prefer offline dating and require the personal touch.