💡 In simple words: WikiDeal has lots of clever, fair ideas built into it, about money, trust, sharing, and solving arguments. This page is the big list where you can find every one of them and read what each does.

🎯 In 20 seconds (expert summary): The innovations listed here are tested and refined step by step, and they interact with one another: what matters is the whole, not any single part. The intent is not to reinvent the wheel, but to assemble existing ideas into a globally functional ensemble.

WikiDeal socio-economic innovations

Innovations index, WikiDeal R&D

Neither total innovation nor zero innovation

None of the ideas gathered here is a total innovation, and none is zero innovation. Each one is inspired by others: this work belongs to the mix culture, and what becomes interesting is the assembly of the whole. Sometimes an idea is simply better calibrated, better highlighted or better deployed here, or the context is favourable to test it. One example: the Orsec plan (the French framework organizing emergency response) already exists and works, but nothing comparable exists in the world of commerce and commercial policies; adapting such an existing mechanism to a new field is the kind of innovation this page describes.

The process is iterative: test, collect feedback through qualitative and quantitative analyses, and improve progressively, learning while doing, keeping a balance between overall coherence and going to the essentials. Some innovations are planned for testing and not yet deployed.

The list is open and unlimited: the count does not matter, only the innovations do. These are intended as citizen-initiated innovations: ideas stemming from citizen initiative, proposed and refined in the open. The methodology envisaged to move them from idea to prototype and deployment (five work profiles combined with open calls) is described on the AI Supported Deployment page.

Foundational concept

Two innovations come first and carry all the others.

Innovation number one: a double platform. On one side, contract models endorsed by lawyers; on the other side, smartphone applications built on those models. The contracts are intended to be fair, balanced and consumer approved (reviewed and approved by user and consumer groups), and to serve the interests of users and providers, not the interests of third-party structures.

Innovation number two: the same governance as Wikipedia, applied to deals and marketplaces instead of encyclopedic knowledge.

Collaborative contract editing belongs to these foundations. The initial observation: searching online for a contract model with guarantees is difficult today. Lawyers keep the important clauses and articulations (they have models, but do not easily share them: NDAs can be found, for example, but not much more), and the explanations around the clauses are missing: usual risks, bad practices linked to certain clauses, frequent misinterpretations, protective measures. This is what is missing, and this is what WikiDeal intends to provide. The starting hypothesis: like knowledge, agreements and deals can be drafted participatively, as citizens, and then endorsed by lawyers who take responsibility for them and provide services around them; it stops there.

The work is organized around contract bases: one common contract base per subject, with its clauses, then adaptations validated as much as possible by lawyers, for online applications run by user groups. This content architecture differs from Wikipedia, which is made of many individual articles. A contract base is expected to mature like an encyclopedic article that has covered its subject: at some point, important modifications stop, and the remaining adaptations mostly reduce the diversity of options (for example, termination only at term instead of "at term, or anticipated against compensation"; or four early-termination conditions instead of seven). Around a mature base, the surroundings are widely documented: compensatory measures, options, alerts, specific advice, common cases. Contract bases also open creative possibilities: less usual early-termination options against compensation, unusual and reliable guarantees that create trust, and linked contracts, where several contracts become a program. A fundamental principle holds through all of this: part of the platform is a wiki where anyone can participate.

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
Collaborative Contract Editing	Starting	Contracts are wiki-edited, versioned, and community-validated like Wikipedia articles, then endorsed by lawyers; organized around common contract bases.

How to read this page

The innovations are organized in two blocks: the WikiDeal ecosystem at large (governance, funding, trust and security, direct democracy and free licensing global governance, technology) and the specific marketplaces.

Each innovation combines existing traditions (Wikimedia governance, the cooperative movement, token economics, free software, the Semantic Web) in ways specific to WikiDeal. The origin of each innovation is documented on its own page and in the credits.

Each table also proposes a deployment status at a given date (here: July 2026), on the following scale: under study · starting · being deployed · deployed · widely deployed. Two anchor points: systematic libre licensing has been deployed at 100 percent since the beginning, and Exit to Community is deployed, since it is written into the contracts. The status values below are an initial proposal, under review.

WikiDeal ecosystem at large

The first block gathers the innovations that concern the whole WikiDeal ecosystem.

Governance

Marketplace quality is intended to rest on governance mechanisms rather than on a central authority: coopetition between user groups, peer endorsement by lawyers, and rating mechanisms that proactively stimulate balance.

Feedback is incentivized, not paid. Users would receive stimulations, never money: Miles Credits, user rights, admin rights, rights to be a candidate for certain functions, or direct credits from providers (an authorized late check-in, an extra night, a bottle of wine, a local cultural experience, an unplanned baby bed, more pets than announced, the loan of a vehicle), advantages placed in the common package. The mechanism is meant to incentivize quality evaluation loops. Feedback is meant to be detailed rather than paid: it would cover soft skills in both directions, communication, understanding of instructions, handling of misunderstandings, quick solutions, fluidity, adaptation to needs. Feedback is also linked to compensatory measures. This is one of the missing links of trust creation in decentralized environments: without a central entity acting as guarantor, more documentation effort is asked from participants, but in exchange there are fewer intermediaries taking commissions along the way, because strengths and weaknesses are better documented. These motivation tools are close to the civic incentive approach.

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
Co-opetition	Under study	User Groups compete and cooperate at once, quality without destructive rivalry.
Peer Endorsement	Under study	Lawyers endorse contracts: a named accountable responsibility, with additional paid service providing in case of adaptation or dispute. Their expected clientele: mostly federations and coordinations of user groups, plus people or groups needing tailor-made contracts.
Rating Balancing Policy	Under study	Proactive balancing of marketplace ratings (previously presented as "Judgment Balance Indicator"): not only an indicator, it aims at stimulating balance, keeping feedback honest, calibrated and diversified (feedback coming from many different people, not always the same ones), with motivation and incentive tools.
Incentivized Feedback	Under study	Users earn incentives, not money, for useful and detailed feedback: Miles Credits, user rights, admin rights, candidacy rights, direct credits from providers.

Funding

Need-driven funding acts as a reward ratio regulation: a second algorithm, the "decider" of the reward. When needs are low, the corresponding share would feed a provision fund intended to be managed by the Ynternet.org Foundation for the future of WikiDeal; when needs are high, the reward would be higher. A key point: the funding starts at zero or in negative territory, because investments by the founders take place before the call for funding; this is what makes the beginning very attractive. The key variable is the funding cost ratio: how much has already been spent when the first call is launched. Donors and potential donors would receive notices (suggesting a complementary donation, or informing their network) and would see a reward that theoretically decreases over time, though not necessarily continuously: the private reward for donors decreases while the share for R&D and provisioning grows with revenue.

An illustrative example, where the variables matter more than the figures (all figures are placeholders, and contributions remain non-speculative donations): about CHF 100,000 invested before the call for funding, plus about CHF 12,000 per month of operating costs (salaries, servers, steering committee meetings). After 6 months, CHF 100,000 + 6 x 12,000 = CHF 172,000 raised would bring the need percentage below 100 percent. After 12 months, CHF 244,000 raised would mean the initial CHF 100,000 reimbursed and 12 months of costs covered. The variables are the monthly amount (here 12,000) and the number of months of security wanted (typically 3): CHF 100,000 + 15 x 12,000 = CHF 280,000. On a funding curve going from x100 down to x30: a first round of CHF 200,000 (out of a CHF 1,000,000 target) at x100, then a decrease; at CHF 280,000 raised, the CHF 80,000 above 200,000 would average about x85, and the difference between x85 and x30 would benefit the provision fund of the Ynternet.org Foundation.

Deprivatization, Exit to Community and Dual Rewards form one whole. Exit to Community adapts the concept of ownership by the users: it aims at being attractive for donations with rewards, while clearly not being an investment: legally non-speculative, and structurally attractive for donations. Dual rewards come progressively: as the model works, financial rewards would become less important and credits more important. These are rewards if the project works; they are not investments with guarantees, shares or share resale. It is another system, based on the organic deployment of a community. The combination of the bonding curve and need-driven funding creates a self-regulation that makes Exit to Community much less speculative: based only on real flows and real needs.

Annual value increase belongs to funding: the multiplier is more relevant than an added percentage on the reward only. The interest would be to create a stable commitment, in some ways comparable to a stable state bond, but issued by the worldwide community of online commerce users, creating a new interest group at the international level: the actors of online commerce. As everywhere in this model, this remains a donation-based, non-speculative mechanism, with no guarantee.

The Time and Resource Bank and the Miles Credits are the same thing. "Miles" is a temporary working name, chosen to be immediately understandable; it may change. Miles Credits are not a currency: they are facilities, comparable to discounts (the working hypothesis, under legal study, is that like discounts they would not be taxed). They target unexploited resources: unoccupied housing, food still perfectly edible but no longer sellable, under-used vehicles, and similar. Examples: a late check-in at 4 pm instead of noon; transport at fuel cost on a trip already planned; the loan of a holiday house in low season against a paint job. People are generally open to this, but the risk today is that it is complicated, insufficiently documented and insufficiently regulated. WikiDeal intends to bring everything needed, in a very simple form: compensatory measures, tutorials, alerts, advice, in the time bank tradition. When someone accepts an advantage, its limits are well documented, which prevents abuse and creates more motivation. Legal studies aim at creating rings of trust without disguised-salary problems or other legal risks, so that people dare to be generous, humanist and solidary again, without fear of being punished for it.

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
Bonding Curve	Under study	Transparent algorithm converting funding contributions into Credits; early funders get more per CHF.
Need-Driven Funding	Under study	Reward ratio regulation: a second algorithm adjusting maximum Rewards to real needs (funding vs. incompressible costs); low needs feed a provision fund of the Ynternet.org Foundation; the funding curve starts at zero or negative (funding cost ratio).
Annual Value Increase (draft Open Call)	Under study	A possible annual increase on rewards, under study through a draft Open Call (not yet launched); the multiplier is considered more relevant than an added percentage on the reward only; no figure is decided.
Double Commission	Under study	Two small, transparent fees per transaction: a platform fee and a User Group fee.
Deprivatization	Under study	Reclaiming extractive markets as user-governed commons, as Wikipedia did for knowledge; forms one whole with Exit to Community and Dual Rewards.
Exit to Community	Deployed (written into the contracts)	Progressive transfer of governance, ownership, and value to the user community; attractive for donations with rewards, legally non-speculative, not an investment.
Dual Rewards	Under study	Two Credit types: Rewards (CHF-convertible, no guarantee) and Miles Credits (functional: unexploited resources such as housing, food, vehicles).
Time and Resource Bank (Miles Credits)	Under study	Exchange of unexploited resources (housing, transport, food, services) via Miles Credits, in the time-bank tradition; "Miles" is a working name; not a currency, but facilities comparable to discounts.
CHF 1/Month Subscription	Under study	Solidarity-priced membership; one month of usage = CHF 1 nominal.
Subscription or Membership	Under study	Naming reflection: subscribers would also be members with voting rights; "subscription" chosen as the more inclusive term.

Trust and security

Trust and security combine dispute resolution, reconciliation processes and interoperability agreements between user groups.

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
Arbitration Chambers	Under study	Three-level dispute resolution with Condorcet voting, inspired by Wikimedia's ArbCom.
Commercial Truth & Reconciliation	Under study	Formal process to repair distrust and prevent forks caused by personal conflict.
Rings of Trust	Under study	Inter-User-Group agreements enabling Miles Credits interoperability.

Direct democracy and free licensing global governance

This family of innovations combines the Swiss political model (popular initiatives, referendums, collegial decisions at every level) with the culture of free licences: the citizen as legislator, rather than the elected representative. Decision methods are diversified according to the importance of what is at stake and the interest of users; for the more complex decisions, Condorcet voting can be used.

Participatory Observatories (or Citizen Observatories) are unlimited in number: what counts is not a fixed count. They would be run by citizens and created by theme by user groups: online community moderation, whistleblowing, obsolescence risks, fundraising awareness and competition, and many others to come. They are intended as the bases of decision making, and are founded on the model of Slashdot, a historic late-1990s site and an underestimated symbol of free culture, whose karma moderation later inspired the reputation systems of many community sites. Debates and comments earn karma points through honest positive and negative reader ratings; contributors with the best karma obtain admin rights and choose which articles are submitted for publication, that is, control of the debate agenda: a mechanism the project initiator has nicknamed "karmic democracy". The intended flow: article proposals in the observatories; acceptance by high-karma admins; debates and comments (ratings feed karma); open calls issued from the findings; deliverables and possible complementary fundraising; sometimes Condorcet votes for the more complex decisions; and finally innovations adopted collectively. The purpose is reliable information plus whistleblowing: alerts against any mechanism aiming at re-privatizing the platform, reducing trust, or weakening the approach of a global marketplace owned, run and sustained by its users. The same logic then applies to market tools, arbitrations and other components: the observatories are the home base of the whole open calls dimension.

Open calls make this governance porous and flexible: open invitations for community proposals, with waves, awards and status documented on the Open Call portal.

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
Open Calls	Being deployed	Open invitations for community proposals to improve the WikiDeal model; they make the governance porous and flexible. Waves, awards and status: see the Open Call portal.
Participatory Observatories	Under study	Unlimited citizen-run observatories, created by theme by user groups (online community moderation, whistleblowing, obsolescence risks, fundraising awareness and competition, and more), with Slashdot-style karma moderation.

Technology

Systematic libre licensing has been deployed at 100 percent since the beginning: the licences are exactly those of the Free Software Foundation, libre in the pure sense, not merely open source: GNU AGPL v3 for software and CC BY-SA 4.0 for content, everywhere, by default. The aim is an environment of transparency: no technological backdoor, no partial privatization, and no "half-free" trap (merely open source, or non-commercial variants); the choice stays radically non-discriminatory.

Wikimedia markers flag elements inspired by Wikimedia Foundation practices. They are being reframed around variables: an encyclopedic article has no modifiable dates and no optional clauses, while a contract does; these variables are among the technological additions WikiDeal aims at bringing beyond the encyclopedic model. The term Marker is kept.

AI-related innovations also belong to technology: the AI Disclaimer and the AI supported deployment methodology.

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
Systematic Libre Licensing	Deployed (100 percent since the beginning)	AGPL v3 for software, CC BY-SA 4.0 for content, everywhere, by default; exactly the Free Software Foundation licences, libre in the pure sense.
Structured Data (Linked Data)	Under study	RDF, JSON-LD, and Wikidata integration for semantic interoperability.
Wikimedia Marker (WM-XX)	Starting	Nomenclature marking elements inspired by Wikimedia Foundation practices; being reframed around contract variables (modifiable dates, optional clauses) as technological additions beyond encyclopedic content.
AI Disclaimer	Starting	Mandatory transparency marker on every AI-assisted page, requiring disclosure and human validation.
AI Supported Deployment	Starting	Working hypothesis for the R&D methodology: five AI-era work archetypes (Prototyper, Builder, Sweeper, Grower, Maintainer) combined with Open Calls to move from idea to prototype to deployment.

Specific marketplaces

The second block gathers the innovations that concern specific marketplaces. It is expected to become very large over time, as many contributors bring many innovations; entries state, where relevant, which marketplace they concern.

User groups are the core of the Market. They organize freely, in coopetitive mode: competition inside WikiDeal happens between user groups, cooperatively. Anyone can participate in several user groups. The more inclusive a group is, the less competition it faces (internal versus external competition), and very specific postures are possible: for example, a group specialized in night transport between two cities (private night buses, with the possibility to sleep in the vehicle), or babysitting only in a holiday context (young people travelling to attractive destinations while being babysitters).

Innovation	Deployment status (July 2026, proposal)	Summary
User Groups	Starting	Autonomous local or thematic communities with their own governance and commissions: the coopetitive core of the Market, from night-bus transport between two cities to holiday babysitting. Concerns every marketplace.
Use Case Maturity Score	Under study	Incubation and development indicator: a composite per-portal score from seven indicators of marketplace health, showing how far a use case has developed. Concerns every marketplace portal.
Revenue Spreading	Under study	Concerns the street fundraising marketplace (fundraising through dialogue): dialoguers choose 100 percent payout in year 1 or 20 percent spread over ten years; revenue better distributed, serving the interests of NGOs.
Reverse Abuse	Under study	Programme-type mechanism reusing multinationals' legal financial structures to repatriate value to small producers and user-governed supply chains.

Reference language: English. Each innovation has its own page under R&D.

See also: R&D Portal · Open Call portal