💡 In simple words: This page explains the first money that helps a new project get started.

⚠️ 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.

Initial WikiDeal Funding — Early Supporters & Founders

From WikiDeal, the Wikipedia of e-commerce

This page explains the principles behind the initial CHF 50 million in Cash Rewards reserved for early supporters and the founder. It is a pilot for a new model of deprivatization: acknowledging the founder's contribution within strictly limited — not unlimited — profitability, and enabling the community to progressively buy back rights.

The CHF 50 Million Cash Reward

WikiDeal's initial funding structure reserves CHF 50 million in Cash Rewards to be distributed by the founder to early supporters. This amount is managed freely by the founder under the Early Supporter Contract, with the remainder structured as a rights transfer to the community.

In relative terms: if WikiDeal reaches Wikipedia's scale (over 1 billion users), CHF 50 million is a very modest sum. It does not compare to the billions accumulated by GAFAM or AI giants. It is intentionally sized to be acceptable — proportionate to the work contributed, not to speculative extraction.

Three Objectives

1. Bootstrap Incentive

Starting a community marketplace from scratch is extremely difficult. The first CHF 50M in Cash Rewards acts as a lever to attract early supporters who, having received a Cash Reward, are motivated to further contribute, donate, or bring others in. It primes the pump.

2. Transparency as a Trust Signal

Some potential contributors will wonder: is this a scam? The CHF 50M is a transparent, publicly documented answer. The sum is neither too large (it would signal extraction) nor too small (it would signal no skin in the game). It signals: yes, enrichment is possible, but at correct proportions. It remains aligned with the goals of a fairer world — unlike unlimited profit models.

3. A Replicable Model

The Early Supporter + Founder mechanism is a pilot for a new form of deprivatization. The same model can be replicated at smaller scales:

A few hundred CHF for a local User Group starting from scratch;
A few hundred thousand for a thematic portal (e.g., Cooperative Housing);
A few million for a major domain with significant upfront funding in time, ideas, and value.

In each case, the principle is the same: recognize the founder's or initiator's contribution within strictly limited profitability, then transfer rights progressively to the community.

Limited Profitability & Full Rights Transfer

The concept of limited profitability for founders is one of WikiDeal's core success criteria. Unlike startup models where founders can accumulate unlimited wealth, WikiDeal sets a ceiling. The founder receives a meaningful, fair reward — but the bulk of value created goes to the community.

Beyond limited financial reward, the model involves a complete transfer of rights — on ideas, governance, and all intellectual contributions. After the initial phase, the founder retains no special privileges beyond the right to give an opinion like any other community member.

Mandates given to founders and initiators are initially important, but they are explicitly revocable by the community — first by the Steering Committee, then progressively by the broader community as it matures. The goal is always maximum inclusiveness: allowing those who initiated the project to remain active, feel included, and continue contributing — while ensuring their role is progressively diluted and reduced as community governance takes hold.

This is the culture of free software applied to a marketplace: as seen in Debian, Wikipedia, and other open-source commons, where founders step back and communities take over. It is not a weakening of the project — it is its ultimate measure of success.

Replication at Scale

The Early Supporter model is designed to be replicated beyond the initial WikiDeal core. Future cycles will apply the same principles to sub-projects and thematic communities:

Arbitration Chamber (ensuring deal safety for all users)
Thematic User Groups (Transport, Housing, Cooperative Living, etc.)
Domain-specific portals with their own funding rounds

Each new incubation cycle will use the same mechanism — or improved versions of it — generating new waves of community co-ownership and new generations of early-adopter rewards.

Future Incubation Cycles

The initial WikiDeal core is just the first cycle. It will be followed by other incubation cycles that are no longer about the core WikiDeal model itself, but about specific aspects of the ecosystem:

Dedicated funding rounds for the Arbitration Chamber;
Thematic community rounds for specialized User Groups;
Domain rounds for large-scale portals (e.g., real estate, mobility).

These future cycles will allow WikiDeal to grow organically, with each new domain having its own early supporters, its own limited-profitability founder model, and its own path toward community self-governance.

Gov/en/Portal:Economy/Initial-Funding