Ava thought she was losing it. She’d matched with a guy named “Matt” on her favorite dating app. They hit it off, chatted for a week, she sent her some money for repairing his broken car on his way to her home, and then he ghosted. A few weeks later, she matched with “Ryan.” Looked familiar, but had a different name and slightly tweaked bio. Same story: good vibes, then gone. The third time, it was “Chris.” At that point, she screenshotted the profiles and did a side-by-side. Same dude. Same face. Just different names, different accounts.

Turns out this guy had dozens of profiles running at the same time. Farming data and even running scams. Ava reported it, but it took weeks to get the profiles taken down, and even then, who knows how many were still active?

And that’s not an isolated case. Dating apps are overflowing with bot accounts, recycled photos, AI-generated faces, and people with tens of fake identities. It’s not just annoying. It’s dangerous.

In 2024, over 64,000 people in the U.S. lost more than $1 billion to romance scams. Many of those scams start with fake profiles on dating apps. In 2023, another scam called pig butchering, where scammers fake relationships to drain victims’ wallets, racked up $4 billion in losses (FBI Report).

So, what’s the typical fix? Most apps introduce KYC. Ask users to upload their ID or verify through a third party.

But the fun part in Eva’s case and many like hers, all three profiles were KYC verified. Even KYC doesn’t solve the problem? Yes! Let me tell you how.

Stolen identities are easy to buy on the dark web. Some come with selfies, full names, passport scans, the works. If someone’s determined enough, they’ll just reuse that data and verify dozens of fake accounts. Now they’re KYC’d—just not... unique and themselves.

This is just one of the many cases that highlight the need for Sybil-resistance, and one that most everyone would agree would be really good to have.  

That’s where Humanode comes in.

Instead of asking for ID documents and performing KYC, Humanode uses private biometric verification, which verifies that the person signing up is a real, unique, living human. For now, it uses a privacy-preserving facial scan, no personal data, no IDs, and no storage of the image itself. The scan and verification happen in confidential virtual machines (CVMs) and generate proof of uniqueness, and that’s it. One face = one profile. No duplicates. No spammers.

Right now, Humanode has three working products BotBasher for Discord and Telegram, Biomapper (on-chain and cross-chain), and Oauth2 (suitable for web2 apps), with more than 2 million verifications. 

Your app doesn’t get access to the user’s face. It doesn’t need to know their name. It just gets the answer to a simple question: “Is this a real, unique person?”

The private biometric check adds a layer of human-proofing that scammers can’t get around. They can’t fake multiple faces. They can’t use someone else’s ID. And they can’t run 20 accounts at once unless they’ve got 20 actual humans helping them out. In addition, the spammers biometrics can also be blacklisted so that they won’t be able to register again unless they get a new face. Although they can sock-puppet, asking someone else around to do the biometric verification for them, this issue could easily be resolved by combining Humanode's private biometric uniqueness check with simple KYC. Plus, the number of actual living human beings is limited, unlike the unlimited fakes generated by AI. 

Which means your platform gets actual, real users. Your users are safer. And trust, actual trust, starts to build between strangers.

Because at the end, people don’t quit dating apps because of bad dates. They quit because they stop believing anyone on the other side is real.

And maybe it’s time to change that. If this is something that interests you, you can check Humanode’s Biomapper (if your app is on blockchain), which is now cross-chain, meaning that you can easily integrate uniqueness verification into your dApp on any EVM-compatible chain. Biomapper is currently deployed on 10+ chains, including Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche, Hyperliquid, Sonic, Sei, and more. And this number will grow as we move forward. If you opt in for Biomapper integration, you can be a trend setter and leader in adopting the technology. 

On the other hand, if your app isn’t onchain, you can simply use Humanode Oauth2 integration and integrate a uniqueness check in your dating app.

Check how Humanode can help: https://humanode.io