The idea of a decentralized travel marketplace was conceived by our team back in 2016, inspired by our experience working on other projects in travel. Later that year we published a manifesto, where we described the need for an intermediary-free environment, a free market controlled by its participants. We envisioned that such a platform would not just reduce fees and remove entry barriers, but also promote trade and innovation. The manifesto was well-received by the industry professionals, and we further developed our ideas in the original Winding Tree white paper.
We released the pilot version of the Winding Tree Marketplace in 2020, but we did not achieve the desired adoption rate. The goal of this paper is to analyze why that happened, identify concrete issues, and outline a roadmap that would make the Marketplace the ultimate travel distribution platform.