💡 In simple words: A page explaining who WikiDeal is for and how it helps different people.

⚠️ Not yet approved. This page describes a proposal that is still under community review. It is documented here so it can be discussed, improved and endorsed.

Target Audience & Incubation Strategy

From WikiDeal, the Wikipedia of e-commerce · Socio-Technical Innovation by Théo Bondolfi

WikiDeal follows a two-phase adoption strategy. The first phase targets motivated contributors with academic and practical experience in collaborative economics. The second phase opens to the general public through easy-to-use apps and marketplace pilots.

Contents

Phase 1 — Incubation Audience

The incubation public is composed of people with a strong motivation to contribute and who benefit from co-financing support in one or more of the five platform pillars:

#	Pillar	Description
1	Market & Funding	Includes fundraising and market deployment
2	Technology	App development, MediaWiki infrastructure, APIs
3	Legal	Contract drafting, endorsements, governance protocols
4	Core / Governance	Steering committee, open calls, decision processes
5	Community & Outreach	User group incubation, ambassador networks

Target Profiles for Phase 1

Practitioners of solidarity economy
Wiki culture enthusiasts (Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia community)
Crypto & token economics explorers
Digital and societal transition advocates
Ecosystem solutions researchers
Academic researchers in economics, especially Wikinomics (key keyword)
People who enjoy complexity and systemic thinking
Entrepreneurial profiles with academic or field experience

Phase 2 — General Public (via Apps)

Once pilot marketplaces are running, WikiDeal opens to the general public through consumer apps. This phase does not require prior knowledge of cooperative economics.

The transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 happens through pilot experiments in legally and practically simple domains.

Community Migration

Phase 2 is not only about new users discovering WikiDeal through apps. It also includes existing platforms and communities migrating to WikiDeal. Two types of migrations:

Migration by conviction — Platforms that believe in the WikiDeal model and want to join proactively.
Migration by necessity — Platforms that are struggling, losing users, or becoming financially unsustainable. WikiDeal gives them a second life.

In both cases, the migrating platform transforms itself into a User Group within the WikiDeal ecosystem, retaining its community identity while gaining access to WikiDeal's infrastructure, governance tools, and financial mechanisms.

Pilot Domains — The Bridge Between Phases

Two pilot domains serve as bridges between the incubation phase and full public adoption:

Babysitting — Simple legally and practically. Low barrier to entry. Demonstrates the full contract lifecycle in a familiar setting.
Street Fundraising — Has a double utility: it validates the platform and raises funds for WikiDeal itself. Fundraisers become early ambassadors.

Dogfooding — WikiDeal Funds WikiDeal

WikiDeal applies a deliberate dogfooding principle: it uses its own tools to finance itself first — before proposing them to others. This is not just a philosophical stance; it is a practical commitment to credibility.

Concrete Example: Street Fundraising

Street fundraising contracts are used first to raise funds for WikiDeal itself, employing volunteer dialogueurs (street fundraisers). This serves simultaneously as:

A real pilot test of the platform's contract and payment mechanics
An actual fundraising campaign for WikiDeal

The fundraisers are not just test users — they become early ambassadors who understand the platform from the inside.

Beyond Street Fundraising

The same logic applies across WikiDeal's financial toolkit:

The Bonding Curve and other financial instruments are tested by WikiDeal on itself before being offered to partner communities.
WikiDeal is the first test subject of its own innovations — every tool, contract type, and governance mechanism is validated internally before scaling.

This approach builds trust in the most direct way possible: the team uses what it builds. When WikiDeal proposes a tool to a new community, it can say — truthfully — "we have used this ourselves."

Markets/en/Portal:Target Audience/Main