Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Research:How-And-Why-It-Can-Work
💡 In simple words: This page explains how and why WikiDeal can grow and work for many people around the world. It talks about fair prices, trust, and how everyone can join together to make one big shared marketplace.
⚠️ 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.
From WikiDeal, the Wikipedia of e-commerce — R&D Research Portal
This page presents the reasons we believe there is strong growth potential for WikiDeal. It complements the founding research hypothesis — "Can users own, run and sustain a global marketplace?" — with a concrete shared vision and deployment strategy rolled out progressively, through organic market expansion.
These are not promises. WikiDeal is a proof of concept and a citizen science project. But there are substantive reasons to believe the model can achieve broad adhesion. They are laid out here.
1. Lower Commissions: Decent Income Without Extreme Profit
WikiDeal's commission hypothesis ranges from 5–15% (vs. 10–50% for most incumbent platforms). See Revenue Structure for the complete model.
This is not zero — those who deploy and operate services on WikiDeal must earn a dignified, decent income. The goal is not to impoverish service providers. The goal is to eliminate extreme profit extraction — the binary logic of the GAFAM and net-economy IPO culture, which operates on a winner-takes-all dynamic: a platform must either buy out or destroy competitors, or risk being destroyed itself.
WikiDeal escapes this logic by design. Because the platform is a commons — governed by the Exit to Community principle and structured around co-opetition — it does not need to conquer. It can grow without being forced to buy or destroy competitors. Instead, the strategy is to unite the strength of the small (unir la force des petits): all the small players — independent service providers, cooperatives, citizen initiatives — can ally on a single commons platform and, together, outcompete the large incumbents, not through aggression, but through structural fairness.
Significant contributors earn decent, sustainable revenue. User Groups set their own specific-service commissions within transparent bounds. The surplus, after audited costs are covered, is returned to the community. There is no profit margin by design.
2. More Flexible, More Options
WikiDeal is designed to be more flexible than existing marketplace platforms. Key dimensions:
- Many contract models — employment, volunteering, bike loan, childcare, tutoring, co-housing, and many more — all freely accessible to browse, with lawyer-endorsed versions unlocked via subscription.
- User Groups — autonomous local or thematic communities with their own governance, their own commission rates, and their own contract adaptations.
- Miles Credits — a complementary currency enabling exchange of housing, transport, food, and services within Rings of Trust, giving users flexibility beyond cash transactions.
- Open Calls — seasonal community invitations to propose improvements, new contract models, or entirely new marketplace types.
Users are not locked into a single offer. They can choose the model that fits their community, their budget, and their values.
3. Citizen Initiatives: Organic Market Deployment
One of WikiDeal's core deployment hypotheses is that markets need not be created from above — they can emerge organically from citizen initiative. Small entrepreneurs, associations, and cooperatives launching their own User Groups (babysitting networks, local transport cooperatives, tool libraries, artist collectives, tutoring circles) bring both supply and demand simultaneously when they migrate to WikiDeal.
This is what Community Migrations are designed for. Existing communities — those that already have internal transaction flows and trust relationships — migrate their practices onto WikiDeal's framework. Rather than a cold-start marketing campaign, this is organic market deployment: stimulating merit and personal initiative, rewarding those who invest energy in building their community's marketplace.
The co-opetitive structure means that User Groups have more incentive to improve their own quality than to fight over external users. The competition is internal, productive, and governed — producing better service without destructive rivalry.
4. Users Who Need Lower Prices
For large portions of the population, a 10–20% saving on everyday services is economically meaningful — not a luxury, a necessity. Transport, housing, childcare, household services: when the incumbent platform extracts 25–35% and WikiDeal charges 5–10%, the difference stays in the pocket of the service provider and reflects in the price offered to the client.
This creates a gravitational pull at both ends of the transaction:
- Service providers earn more per transaction — or can offer lower prices and still earn the same.
- Clients can access services that were previously unaffordable, or save meaningfully on regular expenditures.
Even 10% off transport or housing, at scale, matters a great deal to people of modest means. WikiDeal does not serve only affluent, tech-savvy early adopters — it is designed to be accessible and useful to anyone who buys or sells services.
5. Trust: Built by Design, Not by Marketing
Trust is WikiDeal's most fundamental structural asset. Several mechanisms work together:
Corrective and Compensatory Measures
The platform includes built-in corrective measures (dispute resolution via Arbitration Chambers) and compensatory options (redress mechanisms within contracts) that give users confidence that problems can be resolved fairly, without resorting to external legal systems.
Fluid, Fair Contracts
Contracts on WikiDeal are wiki-edited, versioned, and community-validated — like Wikipedia articles, but for legal agreements. They evolve as the community's understanding improves. Volunteer lawyers endorse them and take named, accountable responsibility (Peer Endorsement). This combination of transparency, fluidity, and accountability is rare in the marketplace economy.
1 User = 1 Vote
Governance is participatory: 1 user = 1 vote. Users who contribute to the platform are not just consumers — they are stakeholders with genuine decision-making power. This structure gives users reason to trust that the platform will not be redirected against their interests by a small shareholder group.
Track Records and Decentralized Data
WikiDeal integrates the ability to consult — or to require, in more complex transactions — the track record of the other party: past transactions, satisfaction ratings, community activity records. Crucially, this data is shared only if the parties agree: decentralized, consent-based data sharing. Both parties can flexibly require or waive the other's track record history, depending on the stakes of the transaction. This mechanism, operating within Rings of Trust, allows trust to be built gradually and contextually — without requiring a centralised surveillance architecture.
Interests and Community Signals
Trust also emerges from shared context: seeing the other party's declared interests, the User Groups they belong to, their volunteering history, or their use of Miles Credits for community exchange. These signals provide a richer, more human picture than a simple star rating.
6. Subscription Mandatory Only on Transactions: Browse Freely
A common concern about platform subscriptions is that they create a barrier to entry. WikiDeal addresses this directly:
- Free access: Anyone can browse WikiDeal — read contract models, explore User Groups, consult governance documentation — without any subscription.
- Subscription is triggered only at transaction time: The CHF 1/month subscription (CHF 10/year) becomes due only when a user signs a contract. If a user browses for months and never transacts, they never pay.
- Retroactive billing: Overdue subscription months are settled at the time of the next contract signing — no surprise charges between transactions.
What does the subscription unlock? Added value:
- Smartphone apps for mobile access to the full platform.
- Lawyer-endorsed contracts — the Peer Endorsement layer that makes contracts legally credible and fair.
- Access to the full library of ready-to-use contract models: employment agreements, volunteering contracts, bike-loan agreements, childcare arrangements, and many more.
- Full access to dispute resolution mechanisms.
The subscription is not a paywall — it is a membership in a community-governed commons. The value returned exceeds the cost, especially for regular users.
7. Everything United in One Platform
One of the founding question's key insights is captured in the word "A" — there should be a single platform, not many fragmented ones. The argument: all the small players ally on a single shared platform and, together, outcompete the large incumbents — not through acquisition or aggression, but through structural fairness and network effects.
This unity produces practical advantages:
- Rings of Trust connect User Groups across domains — a babysitter's Miles Credits become usable for tutoring, transport, or festival services as the Rings expand.
- Track records follow users across contexts — not siloed by domain, but portable across the platform with user consent.
- Contract models are shared and improved collectively — a legal innovation adopted in one User Group can propagate across the whole ecosystem.
- Governance decisions affect the whole platform — improvements in arbitration, pricing, or fraud prevention benefit everyone simultaneously.
The alternative — many small competing platforms — produces fragmentation, duplicated costs, and race-to-the-bottom dynamics. WikiDeal's hypothesis is that a single, well-governed commons is more powerful than many small private silos.
8. A Deployment Strategy That Grows Without Conquest
The deployment strategy is progressive and non-aggressive:
- Living Labs first: User Groups launch as Living Labs — small-scale, real-world experiments in specific domains (babysitting, tutoring, tool libraries, etc.).
- Community Migrations: Existing cooperatives and associations migrate to WikiDeal, bringing their users and transaction flows.
- Rings of Trust expand: As more User Groups join, Miles Credits become more widely usable, increasing the network's value.
- Open Calls drive innovation: The community proposes, debates, and adopts improvements through seasonal Open Calls.
- Early Supporters fund the foundation: The Bonding Curve and funding model ensure that those who believe in the project early receive proportionally greater rewards as it grows.
- Volunteer lawyers expand legal coverage: As the community grows, more endorsed contract models become available in more jurisdictions, reducing friction for international transactions.
At no stage does WikiDeal need to acquire a competitor, launch an aggressive advertising campaign, or exploit its user base to grow. The growth is structural: each new User Group, Ring of Trust, and endorsed contract adds value to the whole ecosystem.
| Reason | Mechanism | Key pages |
|---|---|---|
| Lower commissions | 5–15% vs. 10–50% market, at-cost design | Revenue Structure |
| Flexible options | User Groups, Miles, Open Calls, contract library | Innovations Index |
| Citizen organic deployment | Community Migrations, Living Labs | Community Migrations |
| Meaningful savings for users | 10–20% less on everyday services | Why Fund WikiDeal |
| Trust by design | Arbitration, Peer Endorsement, track records, 1 user = 1 vote | Arbitration Chambers |
| Low subscription barrier | Mandatory only on transaction; browse freely | Subscription Model |
| One unified platform | Rings of Trust, portable track records, shared governance | Rings of Trust |
| Non-aggressive growth | Living Labs → Migrations → Rings → Open Calls → Scale | Research Main |
WikiDeal is not a promise of success. It is a structured hypothesis, pursued as citizen science, with a deployment strategy designed to make broad adhesion probable rather than merely possible. These are the reasons we believe there is strong growth potential.