Love Is 'No Battlefield' With The Blockchain, But Is It A Perfect Match? Posted on : Feb 19 - 2018

How was Valentine’s Day for you? Did Cupid, the God of Love, shoot his arrow in your favor? But whether you like it or not for retailers, restaurants and hotels it’s a major event promising big revenues. This year, the National Retail Federation expected U.S. consumers to spend almost $20 billion for Valentine’s - up over a billion from last year.

It was also anticipated to be a busy season for online dating apps and services. With the negative stigma associated with online dating seeming to have been shaken off, today the practice has become a socially-accepted means to find partners.

As an industry, dating services have now become a $3 billion market. Developments in technology and generational turnover have enabled the industry’s growth. Certainly online dating has gone a long way from its infancy of matchmaking sites in the early 2000s - aka the “noughties.” Now, the experience is geared towards the mobile lifestyle through apps like Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel.

Millennials have been instrumental to this. They may be known as a lonely generation, but they do yearn. And, given their penchant for technology, many have turned to online dating services to find partners.

A study by Pew Research Center, a non-partisan fact tank, has shown that use of dating apps by Americans in the 18-24 years age bracket tripled in 2016 versus figures in 2013. Interestingly perhaps millennials are not the only ones participating. Usage by “Baby boomers” aged 55 to 64 also doubled within the same time span.

Today, emerging technologies like blockchain are now figuring out ways into the industry as well. Several blockchain start-ups have set their sights on building online dating services on top of the technology.

For example, networking and connection platform MatchPool is a pioneering dating-meets-blockchain application. And, up-and-coming services like Hicky and Ponder, ventures that both scheduled holding their public token sale on Valentine’s Day itself, are also seeking to improve upon the current online dating experience by applying blockchain’s strengths.

Slightly further afield the technology has even been tested and applied in an effort to stem piracy in the adult entertainment industry by Slovakian blockchain company DECENT, which is seeking in the main to bring blockchain to disrupt content distribution across the media and music industries. View More