Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:User Groups

💡 In simple words: User groups are teams of people who use the platform for the same reason. They join together to share ideas, help each other, and have a stronger voice in decisions. They keep a legal structure and share their expertise.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): User Groups are proposed as the coopetitive core of the Market: autonomous local, thematic or transversal communities below the platform level, with their own governance and commission share. They would organize freely, and the more inclusive a group, the less competition it faces. Revenue would come from commissions, bonding-curve rounds and open-call grants.

User Groups

✏️ User view: You are viewing a community, marketplace, or contract page.

User Group Model

Revenue	Commission share + Reward
Governance	Local autonomy + global rules
Incubation	Foundation support available
Examples	Babysitting, Tutoring, Pet Care
Scale	Local, regional, or thematic

User Groups are WikiDeal's primary organisational units below the platform level. A User Group is a community of WikiDeal members organised around a specific service category (babysitting), geographic region (babysitting in Spanish-speaking countries), or combination of both. User Groups operate with significant autonomy, setting their own Commission rates within WikiDeal's boundaries, managing their own arbitration systems, and organising their own community events, while respecting the core WikiDeal principles embedded in the model.

The coopetitive core of the Market

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 at once.

The more inclusive a group is, the less competition it faces: inclusiveness reduces internal competition, leaving mostly external competition. Very specific postures are possible. Two dictated examples:

• a group specialized in night transport between two cities: private night buses, with the possibility to sleep in the vehicle;
• babysitting only in a holiday context: young people travelling to attractive destinations while being babysitters.

Revenue Model

User Groups generate income through three channels. First, a share of the Commission on every Transaction within their category/region flows to the User Group's operational fund. Second, User Groups can launch their own bonding curve funding rounds, using the same mechanism as WikiDeal Core but for their specific context. A babysitting User Group in East Africa might raise CHF 200,000 through its own curve, using the funds to localise contracts, train arbitrators, and build community Infrastructure. Third, User Groups can apply to WikiDeal's Open Call fund for specific project grants.

This revenue model is designed to align incentives: User Groups that grow the volume and quality of Transactions in their category earn more, reinvesting in further growth. User Groups that operate arbitration services professionally attract more Transactions, because users trust the dispute resolution. The result is a federated system where local expertise is rewarded and central overhead is minimised.

Incubation through Open Calls

A large portion of User Groups will naturally begin their existence as Open Calls. In the lifecycle of an Open Call, a Commission is formed to incubate a specific concept or hypothesis. Once the first results are tested and the topic proves to require ongoing updates (commits), voting, and partial autonomy, the Open Call Commission progressively transforms into a permanent User Group. A User Group can operate with or without a formal legal structure.

While some Open Calls (like designing a logo) are one-off tasks that do not require an ongoing community, marketplace-specific calls (like organizing recurring rides or setting arbitration rules) demand continuous attention. These naturally mature into full-fledged User Groups.

Once established or during the transition, new User Groups can apply for incubation support from Ynternet.org Foundation, which provides: legal template adaptation for local jurisdictions; technical setup assistance for the WikiDeal platform; access to the foundation's network of advisors and partner organisations; and a small seed grant from the Open Calls fund. Incubation is time-limited (typically 12 months) and requires the User Group to demonstrate genuine community need, governance capacity, and alignment with WikiDeal values.

Co-incubation is also supported: two or more User Groups working in complementary domains (e.g. babysitting and tutoring in the same city) can co-incubate, sharing Infrastructure costs and community events while maintaining separate governance. This reduces the overhead of launching multiple groups in the same geography and creates natural bridges between service categories: a family using WikiDeal for babysitting may discover tutoring services, and vice versa.

Examples of Planned User Groups

WikiDeal's roadmap includes User Groups for: babysitting (global launch, multiple regional groups); private tutoring (language-based and subject-based groups); pet care (sitting, walking, veterinary facilitation); bicycle and tool lending cooperatives; local food markets and community-supported agriculture; freelance creative services; and language learning exchanges. Each of these domains has an established informal economy that is (illustrative example) either unplatformed (and therefore lacks trust Infrastructure) or over-platformed (and therefore paying excessive Commissions to extractive intermediaries).

Related scientific research

Autonomous user communities as the core of a marketplace relate to research on communities of practice, online community design, commons governance, and long tail economics. These works inform the User Groups hypothesis.

• Chris Anderson (2006), The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Hyperion, on how niche communities can thrive alongside mass offers: book page on Wikipedia.
• Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder (2002), Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge, Harvard Business School Press: community of practice on Wikipedia.
• Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick (2012), Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design, MIT Press: author page on Wikipedia.
• Jenny Preece (2000), Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, John Wiley & Sons: author page on Wikipedia.
• Michael Cox, Gwen Arnold and Sergio Villamayor-Tomás (2010), A Review of Design Principles for Community-based Natural Resource Management, Ecology and Society, 15(4): doi:10.5751/ES-03704-150438 · Ostrom design principles on Wikipedia.

See also: Co-opetition · All innovations · R&D Portal