Dating in the Metaverse? Seal it With an NFT

71% of Millennials and 79% of Generation Z in the U.S. admit to feeling lonely. 60% of Tinder users say the same. NFT vows, social connections in the metaverse, the harm of loneliness, and what the heck do dating apps have to do with it. Startup waka shares trends in user behavior.

Last waka-updates

Waka is a mini-application for gamified dating inside of the Telegram messenger. We help people find friends based on their interests and preferences - meme swipes, horoscopes, personality tests, anonymous chat mechanics, etc. The product consists of a web application (where all the gamification takes place) and a messenger bot (for authorization and push notifications). We have 50,000 users and you can try waka in Telegram now. We will launch a discord version in January.

Features launched in the last 3 months:

We built Gamified rooms, 5 of them in total. All the rooms are located in a separate tab - waka fun. Swipes are gone, now we help people find friends based on their interests, various contexts, and tests in special "rooms". This is one of the reasons why we call ourselves "anti dating app". Instead of a single visual filter swipes, we give the user more information about a potential friend to turn the matches into real communication.

Desktop version. Many people have asked us to add a desktop version, and we've done it. It's not perfect yet, but now waka can be used from a laptop. Since we are not an app, but a mini-app within messengers - we do not need to be downloaded, which significantly affects the cost per registration. We reduced it to $0.16 , which is really good compared to the traditional dating apps.

Why rooms are better than swipes

Our anti-dating approach is reflected in metrics as well. Users who come to the rooms show higher retention (metric of users returning on different days) than those who use swipes.

N-day retention of users on 1/7/30 day (percentage of users who returned to the app on a particular day):

With each new room, metrics for the entire product grow, because people like the feeling of novelty. With the introduction of the first meme room, the 1-day retention of the entire product increased by 6%. When we made 4 rooms, we moved the room screen to the first screen so the user could see it right away.

In November we launched a room with horoscopes and a hate room matching people based on a quiz, which identifies what is annoying for the user, and just a couple of days ago we launched a personality test room. You take a test to find out your personality type and get a connection with a relevant person; we developed it together with a psychologist.

It is too early to draw conclusions about the metrics in the new rooms the sample is too small, preliminary 1/7/30 day retention is like that:

• Horoscope room ― 40% / 22,9% / 17,4%
• Room “hate it!” ― 30,7% / 10,8% / not enough data yet.

Let's move on to what we will do in the future and which trends in user behavior we will consider in 2022.

How the Metaverse Changes People, and why it's not about VR: What it has to do with us

Even though many still think that the metaverse is a complete transition to a VR/AR space where everyone communicates exclusively through glasses, I don't think that's true.

Our team likes the position that the metaverse is not about moving everything into VR, but about superposition, about intersecting the physical and digital worlds in good products today and in almost any product in the near future.

Don't tell me that you don't live on the Internet!

Watch this video where the child wants to swipe a regular paper magazine - he's used to everything being interactive.

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These numbers have increased over the past two years, also because of Covid. People are getting more and more submerged into the online world, and it's making a big difference in their behavior.

Virtual Worlds are now becoming the 3rd place in a person's life, after Home and Work

ARK Invest predicts that in the next 5 years, the average time spent on video games should increase from 1.1 hours to 1.5 hours per person per day. The percentage of in-game purchases will increase from $130 billion in 2020 to $350 billion by 2025. Gaming is becoming the 3rd place in a person's life, after home and work. When I say online gaming, I also mean metaverse, and here is why.

The concept of the metaverse is influenced by other technologies such as 5G. Wireless research and development company Qualcomm estimates the impact of this technology on the global economy at $13.1 trillion and 22.8 million jobs by 2035. Telecom-operator companies that are installing 5G towers realize that they can't recoup their costs. But they can get the biggest profits from the additional services that will arise due to the high speed of data transfer. These services are closely related to the metaverse.

For example, SK Telecom, South Korea's leading telecom operator, has launched Ifland, a platform "that allows users to communicate in different virtual environments using avatars”.

People Prefer Virtual Worlds for Socialization

Now let's see how the domain of dating apps fits into the metaverse industry (and it fits very well). People willingly go to the metaverse, first of all, for socialization.

More and more teenagers choose online games not so much to have fun, but to socialize. Any game designer or product designer will confirm that adding socialization to games adds retention = user engagement to the game. Recently Fortnite <the battle royale game> introduced "Party worlds" - peaceful maps. Interestingly, in a game where you have to shoot and kill, a completely different mechanic arises - mini-games and communication with people. Fortnite and Epic Games (the company that developed the game) are considered one of the possible leaders of the emerging industry.

Zoomers and Millennials are Lonelier than Anyone

We are developing our app based on research of the US market, because that is our target market. Here's what the Survey Center on American Life found out.

In the 1990s, 3% of Americans had no friends - now it's 12%.  Also at that time 33% of Americans had 10 or more friends - now only 13% have so many friends. Another striking statistic is that today one in five Millennials have no friends at all!

The pandemic contributed to this problem. Many people have lost their friends, especially girls. By the way, there are fewer females in dating apps than males, but not in waka. According to our data, in traditional dating apps, the ratio of males to females is about 30/70, while in waka 48.5%/50.8% with just under 1% of non-binary people. This is due to our positioning - the app is for finding friends and most users are not only looking for people of the opposite sex.

So what are the implications of loneliness? Maybe that's the way it should be? But 71% of Millennials and 79% of Generation Z in the U.S. admit to feeling lonely. 60% of Tinder users say the same.

Loners need Oxytocin, and It's in Deep Connection

Stanford University professor Robert Malenka proved in 2016 that strong social ties influence oxytocin production. Oxytocin is a hormone that induces feelings of satisfaction and calm, reducing anxiety. In addition, the release of oxytocin plays a central role in the stimulation of dopamine pathways. What's interesting is that skin contact is not required for the release of oxytocin. So people can communicate in both messengers and in metaverses to feel less lonely. But what matters here is not quantity but quality: deep friendships, romantic relationships, communication between parents and children. Close healthy social connections <including online> are very important to our bodies.

Single zoomers and millennials are good at sensing how much they need companionship and friendship. On Tinder, for example, there has been a threefold increase in offers to go roller skating, not just to meet people. The app doesn't have that functionality, so they just write it in the description. People are looking for real communication, they're wondering what they can do together, where they can go. Do dating apps cater to their needs? I wouldn't say so. Quick-matches are more about quick dopamine, the moment of a flashy "Match!" screen, after which nothing happens.

So the main goal of waka is to enable people to find quality and healthy social interaction, online and offline!

Instead of swipes <visual filter elevated to the max we bring people together through micro-personalization - by memes, horoscopes, common contexts, hobbies. This serves as an icebreaker and an additional opportunity to get to know the person as an individual, more likely to turn a match into the conversation. In the future, we plan to create a meta-room with all the important information about the user's personality type and preferences - what memes, movies, the music he likes.

And I wouldn't worry about losing some retention in the future. People need more friends than sexual partners. And people will appreciate a product that solves their problem.

Legalize relationships in the NFT - why not?

Recently, my girlfriend and I made a bet, which we secured with NFT. It turned out to be very easy, it's literally a matter of two clicks.

It looks like an Instagram post, except it has more value - because the post belongs to Instagram, and the NFT you created belongs to you. It's saved on the blockchain, so no one can delete it. It's very much like an official document. I thought - why not use this technology to secure a connection with another person? Why not make marriage 3.0 using NFT?

NFT technology can turn quick matches into more lasting connections. And it's again about superposition and the crossing of online and offline. My team and I came up with NFT vows. If a person is somewhat significant to you, then why not anchor it and show it in a new, previously unavailable format? We'll soon show our vision in this direction.

Unresolved Issues

waka is supposed to be a connector for people in different online spaces. We want to connect people where they already are, but don't yet have a user-friendly interface for dating. For now, we are in Telegram, but soon we will be in Discord, Snapchat, and online gaming.

And another thing that's definitely coming to waka soon is the constructor. In 2022 we will make templates so that users can create their own quizzes and rooms. Right now we are developing those rooms, but we can see how quickly the creative economy trend is developing - people like to create things themselves. With this, we plan to increase the percentage of matching and improve the quality of connections.

We're an indie startup that wants to change the way people meet online, and we can't do that alone. We'd welcome your thoughts in the comments. If you like what we're doing, and for those who want to help us develop the product, we've created a Discord community - please join us!