I’ve had a few conversations recently about the concept of anti fragility as it applies to marketplaces.

Antifragility is a concept that any entity actually gets stronger as a result of shock, or damage. It can be applied in business, medicine, systems design and more.

The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.

An interesting thought exercise is how we can design our marketplaces to be antifragile by nature. The shocks can be the loss of entities on any side. For example, the loss of a supplier, or exodus of customers. Can a marketplace actually get better if a supplier is lost, or goes out of business? In decentralized marketplaces (like Teachable or Shopify), this is precisely what happens. It actually improves the quality bar of overall suppliers on the platform. Exodus of customers is similar in decentralized marketplaces - because the damage is limited to one supplier - and an exodus of customers can be a good sign that supplier shouldn’t be in business.

I think we’re going to see a lot more of these types of decentralized marketplaces in the future and it will be good for everyone.