Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Research:Main
💡 In simple words: These are the big questions WikiDeal wants to answer, like 'how do people share fairly?' Researchers study them to make the project smarter.
⚠️ 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.
Research & Development — Questions & Answers
From WikiDeal, the Wikipedia of e-commerce
WikiDeal is an ongoing research and development project. It explores a fundamental hypothesis about participative e-commerce. This page documents the core research questions and the mechanisms developed to answer them.
The Founding Question
Can we create an e-commerce platform that is simultaneously ethical, participative, low-cost, and economically self-sustaining — without relying on advertising, speculation, or shareholder profit?
WikiDeal's answer is: yes, but only if the governance model is radically different. This requires combining the principles of digital commons (like Wikipedia), a cooperative commission model, and community-driven value distribution.
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 have more leverage. (2) The Reward Boost amplifies returns during the critical early phase. (3) Open Calls let contributors contribute 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 Miles Credits support early-stage providers and volunteers, reducing cash outflows. (3) The Programmes 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 Leisure Professional Street Fundraising : 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.