Singapore’s Government Dating App Uses Gale-Shapley Stable Marriage Algorithm

Singapore’s govt dating app runs on a Nobel Prize-winning game theory algorithm. FirstDate uses Gale-Shapley, the 1962 stable marriage algorithm that won the 2012 Economics Nobel and still runs hospital residency matches and kidney exchanges today.

新加坡政府推出的这款约会应用采用了诺贝尔奖级别的博弈论算法。FirstDate 使用的是 1962 年提出的“盖尔-沙普利算法”（Gale-Shapley algorithm），该算法曾获得 2012 年诺贝尔经济学奖，至今仍被用于医院住院医师匹配和肾脏移植配对。

How it works: 1 | Your preferences and dealbreakers build a ranked priority list. 2 | Proposers offer to their top pick. Receivers hold their best offer and reject the rest. Rejected proposers move down their list. Rinse and repeat until locked. 3 | The result is mathematically stable: no two people exist who would both prefer each other over their assigned matches. “The app never showed us each other” becomes impossible by design.

运作方式： 1 | 你的偏好和“底线”要求会生成一份优先级排序列表。 2 | 提议者向心仪对象发出邀请。接收者保留最好的邀请并拒绝其余的。被拒绝的提议者则顺延至列表中的下一位。重复此过程直至匹配锁定。 3 | 结果在数学上是稳定的：不存在两人会同时认为对方比自己当前的匹配对象更好。“应用没给我们匹配到彼此”的情况在设计上是不可能发生的。

The UX: • One match per cycle, zero infinite scroll. • 72-hour decision window. • Contact info revealed only on mutual yes. • Singpass-verified, so everyone is exactly who they claim.

用户体验： • 每个周期仅匹配一人，没有无限滚动。 • 72 小时的决策窗口。 • 仅在双方都点击“同意”后才会显示联系方式。 • 通过 Singpass（新加坡数字身份）验证，确保每个人身份真实。

Commercial apps need you to keep swiping, but this app is designed to get you off the platform. Singapore built the first dating app whose success metric is deleting its own users. (Fun game theory note: Gale-Shapley yields proposer-optimal outcomes - meaning proposers get their best possible stable match, receivers their worst.)

商业约会应用需要你不断滑动，但这款应用的设计初衷是让你尽快离开平台。新加坡打造了首个以“删除用户”为成功指标的约会应用。（博弈论小贴士：盖尔-沙普利算法会产生“提议者最优”结果，这意味着提议者能获得其能匹配到的最佳稳定对象，而接收者则获得其最差的稳定对象。）

Public servants aged 21-35 only for now. Interesting to see if state-sponsored game theory beats the free market (or rather, all the Tinders and Hinges out there).

目前仅限 21-35 岁的公务员使用。看看这种国家支持的博弈论能否击败自由市场（或者说，击败市面上所有的 Tinder 和 Hinge 等应用）将是一件很有趣的事。