Friday Q&A: The creators of superfluid, a virtual currency for creative talent

When Technically Philly first met Nathan Solomon in April, it was hard to keep up.
The soft-spoken engineer was talking a mile-a-minute about a new project he was working on: an online barter exchange for creatives with a dailed-in currency system perfect for that online community.
It was evidence of passion that was simultaneously backed by the smarts of his partner, Branimir Vasilic, an engineer with a background in physics. You know, a guy that knows a thing or two about math.
A few weeks ago the pair launched superfluid, a social network that enables folks involved with web development, design, programming, writing, film, photography and other specialties to more easily collaborate with one another.
Say you’re a genius coder and you’ve designed a new app that just isn’t visually exciting. superfluid connects these different creative disciplines with a simple barter system. To pay a designer, a programmer offers ‘Quids’ for the work, and later, a designer can spend those Quids on his or her own projects.
It’s a novel idea based on a growing number of localised currency systems, like Ithaca Hours in New York. With these local systems, currency is kept within a community, beit Ithica or superfluid.
Currently, Solomon and Vasilic are working on the gig full-time, along with three others who are half-time. The team is preparing to announce a “well known” partner in the virtual currency before the end of September. They’ve also recently launched a contest to promote the new virtual currency with the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy.
We caught up with the pair to talk about the idea origins and just how they were able to create a new monetary system online.


How did you guys come up with the idea?
Solomon: Previous to this, I had been working with transactions in games. Post-point-of-sale activated cards, not conventional money. I had also been helping with some independent games. Indy game developers are very intelligant, very opinionated, so it’s hard to find a way to collaborate. It seemed to me that there should be a better way for people to collaborate.
Vasilic: I’m a physicist by background. I like theory, math. I have an interest in variety of things that have to do with modeling different things. I also lived in former Yugoslavia, where we had hyperinflation. I was interested in providing alternatives to currency that might be in trouble.
You guys launched not so long ago. What’s next for the business?
Solomon: Two months ago, we decided we had something worth pushing out. Previous to that, we were in beta. We have a new partner who is pretty big in virtual currency, a well-known name. We’re working on a competition with Corzo [Center for the Creative Economy]. We have a few hundred people in the system today.
Explain the superfluid marketplace and the Quid.
Solomon: A Quid basically just facilitates transactions and provides some idea of fair value. You can volunteer your time and get other people to volunteer your business. It’s like Kickstarter, but on Kickstarter, you need cash. Instead of cash, what you need is software development, design, marketing. It doesn’t involve anyone putting their hard case on the line.
Vasilic: The currency is basically borrowed into existence. People have done research into this. Every currency does that, even dollars. You have to limit the amount of credit people have. So, you can borrow, but you have to earn back and replenish your balance.
Is there a fee to get Quids?
Solmon: It’s a subscription fee. It’s very low on the consumer side and about $200 per year on the business side. On the peer-to-peer side, it needs to be really big to be useful.
How does one develop a currency or bartering system?
Vasilic: At the beginning, we talked a lot about bartering. Currency just imposed itself on us.
Solomon: We had a lot of conversations in the first year about where the value of money came from. The scenario that became the most interesting to us is the value of the community from the peer-to-peer side of things.
What have you learned about virtual currency?
Solomon: People have really changed how they accept a transaction. The closer you get to the age of someone in college, the more open someone is to a transaction that isn’t based on dollars. All of the people that are doing things based on points [like XBox Live] that aren’t actually dollars, they’re all used to that. As long as people are growing into the dynamic. In games, at least for two decades, the top of the demographic grew by a year every year that went by. There was a point where everyone that came into the market was just aging. I think this market will continue to age too.
Vasilic: It’s interesting because it’s something very mathematical, abstract. What is money? I give you a token and then you can use that token to exchange for something. The token represents a number. Or it’s some piece of paper that represents that number. Then you have very simple rules for what can happen with it. As a physicist and a math geek, I find it very interesting.
Any bigger takeaways?
Vasilic: Everybody hates money because they think it’s evil and corrupt. It can be a store of value, or it can be a medium of exchange. Stay rich, or use it to interact with people. Greed is what people hate about money. The point of superfluid is to help people get things done. We want people to have a zero balance if possible.
Below, an introduction video for the superfluid platform….

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11998851&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

How superfluid works from Nathan Solomon on Vimeo.