Web3 and Chill Is Here

Dating DAOs — redefining modern day romance one smart contract at a time

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Coinmonks

4 min readApr 18, 2022

Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFT, Crypto, it’s hard to be in tech these days and not feel the presence of Web3. We see it in the news, at conferences, on social media feeds, and at parties, permeating all aspects of our lives.

As of matter of fact, it’s in one of those typical Friday night parties in NYC that I found myself in a rather fascinating conversation about DAOs, specifically Dating DAOs.

For those who don’t know, DAOs are Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. Technically speaking, DAOs are internet-native business that’s collectively owned and managed by their members. Decisions by DAOs are governed by proposals and voting to ensure everyone in the organization has a voice. A Dating DAO is basically Tinder but built on blockchain technology. Members of the Dating DAO are to abide by a set of community agreed-upon social guidelines coded in smart contracts.

Before that night, I have never heard of DAOs as potentially profitable dating vehicles. However, by the end of my conversation, I was convinced that Web3 dating might just bring romance back in a big way.

Web2 Dating vs Web3 Dating

As millennials, when we think about dating today, we picture Web2 Apps, such as Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, and the iconic swipe right and swipe left feature. The old school happenstance of finding a love connection through in-person interactions is replaced by user-based recommendation and profile matching algorithms developed by big tech. These Web2 Apps design user experiences that digitized the process of meeting potential connections and take away the “chance” aspect of romance. Though more efficient, dating has become more of a numbers game. Dating has become so transactional that Dating App fatigue is now a thing and there’s nothing we, as users, can do to change the game.

In contrast, Dating DAOs leverage the efficiency of Web2 technologies in a community-driven model. This means the members/users have a say in how they want their digitized dating experience to be. For example, members of a Dating DAO can collectively vote on the way people are matched and then vote again to change the process to improve the experience. Let’s say a match is qualified only when both members engaged in a series of activities used to measure intent but the match ended up less than ideal, members can then vote to change the qualifiers to what they believe would help them find a better connection. The process repeats itself and the DAO essentially evolves with the need of the community.

There are a lot of inherent social benefits from this community-driven model. The community component can help solve the inclusion and diversity issues plaguing big tech. Because all members, via smart contracts, have a say, historically marginalized communities can impact the dating experience as long as they are DAO members. Meanwhile, the Dating App experiences are designed by and arguably for a specific community.

Dating DAOs can also potentially improve the dating experience beyond matching algos. DAOs can facilitate in-person events and experiences voted on by their members. This allows for an extension of curated IRL events from the digital experience that can bring back the in-person component of old-school dating without sacrificing efficiency.

That night, I spoke to two founders who are working on separate Dating DAO projects. In either case, they both expressed the same sentiment:

“We just want to make dating fun again!”

Of course, there are still plenty of challenges ahead to scale Dating DAOs. Can Dating DAOs reach Web2 customers? How can DAOs design IRL protocols? How much is the efficiency impacted? What happens if there’s no consensus? Should engagement qualifiers be standardized? What should even be recorded on the blockchain? NFTs? Tokens?

Although all these questions are still pending answers, I made sure I signed up for the Beta before I left the party.

#CBSDigitalLiteracy

Disclaimer: content written by a Web2 dinosaur therefore technical clarifications from Web3 peeps are welcomed

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Web3 and Chill Is Here

Dating DAOs — redefining modern day romance one smart contract at a time

Web2 Dating vs Web3 Dating

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Written by Sunny Chen