Superfluid

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= Superfluid’s Quids are a stand-alone, non exchangeable currency intended to facilitate the trading of goods, services or … favors. The aim seems to be to build a community around a currency, rather than to impose an alternative currency on an existing community. Superfluid has created a commercially oriented currency, in the sense that it’s privately owned, not property of the community that forms around it. [1]


URL = https://thesuperfluid.com/

Video via http://vimeo.com/11998851


Description

See Sepp Hasslberger's take at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/superfluid-exchange-goods-services-or-simply-favors/2010/06/26


1.

"superfluid was built to be something much more like World of Warcraft’s gold system. We did this because the social interactions of WoW (and other deep MMO titles) seemed so valuable and robust in facilitating community and good-citizenship. At the same time, we were very much inspired by entities like meetup.com, which bring the tools of technology to the support of doing meaningful things in the real world. So, I suppose perhaps we’re also part of the next step Koster describes, of bringing gameplay to your offline life.

Like WoW gold, our Quids are not convertible to dollars, nor can they be purchased. Quids are something of a macguffin, intended to drive collaboration and achievement, as WoW gold does in-game. Quids are built to be transacted, not to be stored as wealth, with the same idea that participation should drive action. Players in WoW freely share skills, gold and advice, and these elements are core to our system, especially on the p2p side." (http://blog.thesuperfluid.com/2011/01/superfluid-and-world-of-warcraft-gold/)


2.

"There are three aspects to the Quid’s value, and I’d certainly prioritize them differently for the variety of user needs, but in general, it functions:

1. As a social currency, similar to local currencies. Among our many advisors are people involved in local currencies, like Paul Glover, the creator of Ithaca Hours. We believe that the social bonds that enable local currencies can be successfully reproduced in an online environment.

2. As a game, in which all users are aware of the simple mechanisms for using a unit that is available in strictly limited quantities (around 400 Quids for each user). We have background in games, and see increasing acceptance of game functionality in a wide variety of non-game scenarios.

3. As an adequate and suitable replacement for unavailable national currency. A more elegant and low friction solution than barter exchanges, like Itex.com, which boast a viable user base of >300k businesses in the US.


Why do we use Quids, rather than try to mimic the US dollar with a “superfluid dollars” sort of scenario? Because our game is clean, and our rules are upfront; a dollar is a dollar, and anything that isn’t should stand on its own. There are a lot of “companyX dollars” that have nothing to do with dollars, but are generated under the conceit that users will actually believe that one of these hyperinflated pseudo dollars possess a specific value. Quids are finding their own value, in consistent quantities, transacted under consistent terms." (http://blog.thesuperfluid.com/2010/05/why-is-a-quid-worth-a-quid/)


3.


"the currency represents the value of those goods and services but that value quickly evaporates if members do not wish to use the currency. That is why Quids are not dollars. Quids cannot be bought for dollars (it is obvious that we have not realistic way of preventing members from doing this but we certainly do not encourage it). There is no point in hoarding Quids. Their purpose is to allow members to exchange goods and services – they need to be constantly earned and spent, not hoarded. Quids are also different from dollars in the way they are issued and the way they can be borrowed." (http://blog.thesuperfluid.com/2010/02/the-thinking-behind-quids/)


Interview

Co-founder Nathan Solomon:

"At its core, superfluid simply provides a virtual currency to enable more productive collaboration within social networks (online and off); primarily in creative and technical projects. More than a year ago, we began the process of building superfluid, and while it only took us about four months to create the basic functionality, it took until now for us to produce the thing we really wanted. The big lesson for us in the process was about how critical and how difficult it is to create the ideal user experience for a new sort of transaction; even when your model is precisely defined and positively received. Just this past week, we released the first iteration that’s clear and compelling enough for people to really use.

I had previously been involved in a variety of unusual transaction scenarios in the games business. So, when my girlfriend mentioned that a friend of hers had a local business in which small companies would exchange goods and services, using a “credit” system that seemed very like the virtual economies in which I was very interested, it seemed worth exploring. The business was a barter exchange, and it’s a somewhat common phenomenon in the U.S., with more than 300k entities participating in them. The downside of barter exchanges is that they tend not to be so well executed online or so scaleable, and are really enabled by an awful lot of legwork on a local level.

My partner in superfluid, Branimir (Brana) Vasilic, had been involved in research at Penn, and holds a PhD in physics. He added an interest in the physics of economies, and a personal history of coming from Serbia at a time of turmoil and currency issues.

Another model that interestingly has somewhat similar constraints to the barter exchange, in generally not scaling and requiring a lot of legwork, is local currency, of which Paul Glover’s Ithaca Hour is likely the best example. We met with Paul after developing our model, and were pleased to find that we had a lot of thinking in common; he’s been pretty inspirational to us since that time. As we developed our model, we came to see that what we’re about is much more like a local currency than it’s like a barter exchange; it, like superfluid, tends to have a focus on facilitating collaboration and growing communities.

The opportunity we saw was to make the benefits of social “rainmaking” ubiquitous; to build an engine that would facilitate everyone’s projects, not just those that have a charming and social networker tied into them. It took a while, but eventually, Brana and I combined the barter exchange, local currency, and concepts from games to create a real social currency, in superfluid. The idea was to take the friction out of getting people to work together and to increase the amount of work done and benefits garnered by adding reciprocity to the process of volunteering to work on a project.

A lot of support that we received in the past year, prior to the latest release, was from people with a specific interest in currency. We had much constructive back and forth with some very interesting people, and even a mention of our project as a “next big thing” from Douglas Rushkoff in his Web 2.0 keynote.We enjoyed these conversations, facilitating them with a blog that gets into the geekier aspects of our thinking; primarily only of interest to us and some of this original audience. This led us to create the money meetup eventsthat will be launching this month in NYC and Philadelphia. These are also inspired by the barcampmoney events in Europe and on the West Coast.

We’re now more rapidly adding members to superfluid, and have relationships with larger communities that will be ramping up soon. That said, though, we’re still very appreciative of all participation and feedback, and eager to help projects find any resources that we aren’t available in superfluid already. Superfluid, like Ithaca Hours, is all about community, and should stay that way, even as we’re able to facilitate a much broader range of communities." (http://shareable.net/blog/is-your-community-superfluid)

The other co-founder is Branimir Vasilic.


FAQ

https://thesuperfluid.com/faq

"Why are there two communities within superfluid?

The IRS has specific reporting requirements covered under the model that it calls a barter exchange: most environments in which a virtual currency is used for transactions that would be taxable fall under this definition. We are compliant with these reporting requirements at superfluid:business, but also realize that a lot of collaborations have no commercial value, so superfluid:p2p is built specifically for such activities: superfluid:business is for transactions that have a financial value, which includes most business transactions, and any transactions involving the transfer of physical items with a value of more than one dollar. superfluid:p2p is for non-commercial transactions solely involving services that don’t have a monetary value."