A brief history of Peddl

Peddl was a graduate project conducted by Matthew Blackshaw, Anthony DeVincenzi, and Dávid Lakatos while at the MIT Media Lab. Since the experiment, the three have formed Terrarium.

Peddl: The First Broadcast Marketplace

Today’s marketplaces for goods and services are imperfect. Participants make an initial post expressing their intention to buy or sell an object, but all offers on this post are private. These offers can be seen as other participants expressing their intention to buy or sell the same item. What if these offers were as public as the initial post? Would this decrease market friction and enable participants to close transactions more efficiently? What if every post and offer were tagged with a location enabling a real-time proximal picture of supply and demand?

Peddl explored this possibility through the creation of a different kind of marketplace, a broadcast marketplace, where a combination of public post, proximal awareness and mobility decreased the friction of information flow and facilitated efficiency. Through Peddl users were able to efficiently view, understand and act upon a proximal picture of supply and demand.