Summary
waka was born more than a year ago as a response to increased loneliness and lack of social bonding opportunities in the digital world. It has incorporated gamification techniques to take away the burden of breaking the ice and finding ‘friends and dates’. we have assembled the Bonding DAO from 7 projects and 150 researchers and industry professionals to find the solution to the problem of loneliness and build a metaverse of Socialization projects on the NEAR Blockchain. Today waka has 70.000+ registered users and 180.000$ of funding from 6 angel investors.
deck:
waka __ digital sandbox for finding friends and dates - deck - 22.07.pdf (1.3 MB)
Status Quo
- 80% of GenZ feel lonely¹
- 50% of the awake time we spend on the internet². The metaverse is the closest thing to the human touch in the digital world.
- 86% of GenZ consider their online relationships as important or more important than the real ones³.
- Video games have become the "Third Place“ after home and work and 80% of gamers are Socializers according to the Bartle’s test⁴.
- The entire creator economy’s estimated valuation is around $104.2 billion⁵.
Our Solution
waka is a digital sandbox for finding friends and dates. Users, influencers, brands, DAOs can create their own matchmaking algorithms and bonding mini-games. Users connect with each other and fill their digital soul with virtual items, room-token and bonding achievements.
For example Nike creates their own matching room (algorithm) for their community (sneaker-style match). Users receive tokens (SBT, NFT) for opening the token-gated Nike room. These tokens are saved in his digital Soul. The more room-tokens the user gets the more targeted are their matches. Users come back to waka to improve their profile, receive new matches, play bonding minigames (ice-breakers, social staking, digital marriage).
Nike improves bonding inside of their community through network effect (powered by waka). Nike can earn rewards from room-token-sales. Communities can exchange audiences through token-gated rules.
Web3 match-making economy
Waka creates a whole economy of matching people together. You will surely be well rewarded for any contribution you made to the mission of finding perfect fits. Create a token-gated room with a room-constructor and get up to 70% cut of every token sale. Share any token-gated rooms receive up to 30% from every token sale of that room. With your room-tokens you can get matched with other holders of that token in all other waka-rooms. You also can get into token-gated communities based on your token holdings. Combination of room-tokens allows you to get very filtered matches.
Monetization Plan
Since waka is a game for socialization we plan to combine the most successful monetization models of the dating industry and free-to-play model. Users who want to feature their status can acquire Digital Identity Representation in the form of Non-transferable NFT. This NFT will be generated based on personality traits of the owner from waka room-test. Additionally, those users can buy shards of the universe, which improve visual representation and give in-game power ups to the user. Depending on the type of the powerup users will be able to access rooms more often, get more XP, get more in-game currency, get more matches (generally receive unlimited ways to solve their loneliness itch). Paying customers will also be able to get their NFT either to their NEAR wallet and will be provided a free NEAR account via a linkdrop.
Recent Successes
Our NEAR ecosystem participation has recently been noticed and received a high regard from the jury of the NEAR UA Hackathon. Waka was honored with prizes in 3 categories:
- powerful impact
- people’s choice
- 3rd place
Following this success we had accomplished two additional partner projects with Mintbase. We started an animation competition and got sponsorship for prizes. Additionally, we and Mintbase created a waka-room with a test, which allows us to find the best NFT-store.
Current stage:
- web app with seven custom rooms
- constructor for creating test-based rooms (40+ rooms)
- Our web app is connected to Discord and Telegram bots.
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Stats:
- 90k matches already happened on waka
- a number of rooms show 42% 30 day retention rate which is above industry standards.
- 80% of our users are looking for friendship
- 0.22$ average CPR
Why we chose Near:
Currently waka has 70.000+ users and majority of them are non-crypto. Those users came to our app to solve their loneliness problem and not for short-term monetary gain. Those users more than others need smooth onboarding and seamless user-friendly experience. Near can offer infrastructure for building web3 apps with web2 UX. Additionally, the Near ecosystem of projects is highly cooperative. This allowed us to build a DAO of projects looking for solutions to the loneliness problem. Currently, the Bonding DAO members are: Amber, Nepbot, Popula, Moodbot, Intimatica, TelegramSurf, Waka and 150+ industry specialists.
Goals and Objectives:
This Near grant will allow us to develop the functionality below.
- NEAR Wallet login integration
- Flow for wallet creation for non-crypto users
- Development of creator economy rewards (for room creation and room sharing), token-gated access to rooms and use of community tokens in all other waka-rooms for matching between token holders.
- Development of waka Social Graph, Digital Identity and Social Reputation infrastructure. Opportunity to enrich Digital soul through finishing waka-rooms.
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Value for the ecosystem:
we plan to succeed at bringing web2 users into Near Blockchain for the following reasons:
- Our priority is to create a smooth web2 experience in a web3 app. Our web2 users will need to acquire Near wallet in order to grow their digital identity and benefit from all other perks, which Bonding DAO has to offer.
- We have vast knowledge of attracting web2 users to our app (waka currently has 70.000+ registered users). We will continue to apply our knowledge in attracting new users and converting old users into web3.
- Together with popula.io from Bonding DAO we develop a social graph and decentralized reputation of our users. All other projects of Bonding DAO will gradually be connected by this infrastructure. This will allow us to turn Bonding DAO into a Metaverse of Sozialisation Projects.
- Waka’s creator economy is designed as a viral system, where any representative of some community can create a matching and socialization space specifically for their community in minutes and then share it in that community. Room creators and room promoters are rewarded for their contribution. Thus waka and Near network are being spread virally.
About the team:
WAKA is a team of 5 professionals who met in April 2021 and has to date attracted 180,000$ from 6 angel investors.
website: https://web.waka.cool/
telegram bot: Telegram: Contact @wakacool_bot
discord bot: waka matching
discord community: Discord
twitter: https://twitter.com/waka_cool_app
instagram ukr: https://www.instagram.com/waka_cool/
instagram en: https://www.instagram.com/waka_app/
tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waka_cool
hackernoon article: Dating in the Metaverse? Seal it With an NFT | HackerNoon
¹Source: Cigna 2020 Loneliness Index
²Source: gwi.com//hootsuite.com
³Source: GenZ Report
⁴Source: Bartle’s Player Type Test
⁵Source: Influencer Marketing Hub