Logo Story

Why a butterfly sums up Catchfly

The human social network is arguably the most complex system in the known universe.

It is a graph where the nodes are human beings, brains, the most complex objects we know.

Abstract network graph connecting human nodes
Human network graph

This means that a small perturbation can radically change the state of the entire network, with effects several orders of magnitude greater than in any other chaotic system.

Lorenz attractor animation illustrating chaotic butterfly curves
Chaos theory simulation

More poetically, this is the so-called butterfly effect.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

The app aims to give users a tool to catch the butterfly effect of their network, hence the name Catchfly.

Its logo, inspired by a butterfly, is designed using the same curves that appear in simulations of chaos.

Also, there are 4 curves for each wing: 42!