Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Main

💡 In simple words: WikiDeal is a big experiment. This portal is the laboratory: it holds the big question the project tries to answer, the new ideas being tested, the observatories that watch how things evolve, and the open calls where anyone can bring ideas.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): The R&D portal gathers WikiDeal's research and development activity, organised around the founding question: can users own, run and sustain a global marketplace? It hosts the described innovations, the participatory observatories, the open calls and their maturity scoring, the research questions and the living labs. The experimentation is framed by Prototype 1 and inscribed in the innovation management experience of the Ynternet.org Foundation, whose supporting bodies (curatoriums, scientific councils, steering committees) are under construction: work in progress, backed by expertise and vision.

R&D Portal

The founding question

All the research and development of WikiDeal works toward one founding question:

"Can users own, run and sustain a global marketplace?"

In other words: can an e-commerce platform be simultaneously ethical, participative, low-cost and economically self-sustaining, without relying on advertising, speculation or shareholder profit? The working hypothesis of WikiDeal is: yes, but only if the governance model is radically different. This would require combining the principles of digital commons (like Wikipedia), a cooperative commission model, and community-driven value distribution.

This question is the base of the whole project. The page Why and How WikiDeal Can Work presents the current state of the answer, and the research questions below detail the main sub-questions.

Sections

• Innovations: open, unlimited list of socio-economic innovations, with comparison
• Observatories: participatory citizen observatories, hosted in the Market space (concept and open list)
• Open Calls: the open calls, organised in waves
• Open Calls Maturity: maturity scoring of open calls
• Pilot use cases: real-world pilot experiments in selected markets (Babysitting as the model pilot)
• Living Labs: real-world research environments (Ecopol, ENoLL)

Prototype 1: the experimentation framework

The research is not abstract: it is carried out through Prototype 1, the first test version of WikiDeal, funded by a first CHF 1,000,000 round with defined deliverables, notably including the results of the wave 2 open calls and pilot use cases in selected markets.

An experience of innovation management

This R&D programme is inscribed in the innovation project management history of the Ynternet.org Foundation, active since 1998 in ethical and inclusive digital transition. The supporting bodies of the programme (curatoriums, scientific councils, steering committees) are being elaborated: this is work in progress, backed by an existing expertise and a long-term vision.

Research questions and answers

This section documents the core research questions and the mechanisms developed to answer them (merged from the former Research portal page).

How do you attract early funders?

How can a platform with no shareholders and no dividends attract funding at launch?

Three mechanisms work together: (1) the Bonding Curve creates a transparent, algorithmically defined relationship between subscriptions and reward potential: early funders receive a higher reward multiplier. (2) The Need-Driven Funding amplifies the redistribution during the critical early phase. (3) Open Calls let contributors bring not just money but also ideas, labor and expertise, and receive deferred rewards based on adoption and longevity.

How do you ensure long-term sustainability?

How does WikiDeal stay viable long-term, beyond the launch phase?

Through layered mechanisms: (1) low commissions reduce friction and build user trust. (2) Hybrid Karma tokens support early-stage providers and volunteers, reducing cash outflows. (3) The Programs framework gradually incubates new marketplaces using existing communities, avoiding the need for expensive cold-start campaigns.

How do you solve the cold-start problem?

How do you bootstrap a marketplace when both buyers and sellers are not yet present?

WikiDeal's primary cold-start strategy is Community Migrations: onboarding existing communities (cooperatives, associations, User Groups) that already have internal transaction flows. These communities "migrate" their existing practices onto WikiDeal's framework, bringing both supply and demand simultaneously. This is reinforced by an internal competition model: User Groups are incentivized to grow their marketplace rather than compete with other platforms, creating an inward gravitational pull rather than an external conquest logic.

How is co-opetition different from normal competition?

Does WikiDeal compete with existing e-commerce platforms?

The rules of WikiDeal make internal expansion more attractive than external conquest. Because User Groups earn more by improving their own marketplace quality than by fighting over external users, the competition is co-opetitive: participants compete to be the most useful, transparent and well-governed, not the most extractive. This represents a fundamentally different economic deployment paradigm.

Other aspects of the research

• Fiscal study: the legal and fiscal analysis of the funding model
• Anonymous editing analysis: applied research on trust and identity on the platform

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See also: Governance structure · Programs (in the Markets space)