WikiDeal's governance model is built on a single foundational principle: one user, one vote. Unlike shareholder democracy — where voting power scales with capital invested — WikiDeal's deliberative architecture ensures that every participant has equal formal power, regardless of how many memberships they hold, how much they have contributed financially, or how long they have been in the system.

Subscription as Governance Right

Participation in WikiDeal governance requires possession of at least one Credits, valued at CHF 10. This membership serves as the foundational unit of both economic participation and democratic rights. It can be acquired by purchasing it directly, by accumulating fractional credits through platform use (e.g. ten CHF 1 Commissions from babysitting sessions), or by receiving one as a gift from a foundation programme, an ambassador, or another user.

The one-user-one-vote rule means that a major financial funder with thousands of memberships has exactly the same formal vote as a community member who earned their first membership through platform use. This is a deliberate architectural choice, not an oversight. It prevents plutocratic capture — the drift toward governance-by-capital that has afflicted many "community" projects including some blockchain governance systems.

WikiDeal does, however, distinguish between economic weight and governance weight. Funders who commit more capital receive proportionally more economic exposure (more memberships, more potential reward return). They do not receive more votes. This separation is what allows WikiDeal to attract meaningful financial funding without compromising governance integrity.

Exit to Community

WikiDeal is designed as an Exit to Community programme — a term coined by the Zebras Unite cooperative movement to describe a transition path for organisations that want to move from founder or investor control to community ownership. The concept was developed in response to the dominant "exit to acquisition" model of startups, where the goal is always eventual sale or IPO.

In WikiDeal's case, the transition is built into the founding architecture. Ynternet.org Foundation (illustrative example) holds governance authority over the platform. This authority is meant to be transferred progressively to the user community as the platform grows, as governance tools mature, and as the community demonstrates the capacity to manage complex decisions. The foundation ensures the public-interest mandate is respected, and operational governance moves to users.

The founder, Théo Bondolfi, has committed in writing to surrendering all intellectual property rights to the foundation, receiving in return 50 million memberships (under the same Personal/Community mechanism as all funders). His formal influence over retained prototypes is limited to a minority share, ensuring that no single person — including the founder — can override community decisions on the model's direction.

Deprivatisation as a Process

WikiDeal uses the term deprivatisation to describe its long-term trajectory. Privatisation in this context means the concentration of ownership, value, and control in private hands. Deprivatisation is the reverse: a deliberate, structured transfer of those three dimensions back to the community that generates value. This is distinct from nationalisation (which transfers to the state) and from traditional mutualism (which often struggles with commercial sustainability).

The deprivatisation process is incremental and transparent. At each stage, the foundation publishes metrics on community ownership percentage, governance participation rates, financial flows, and Infrastructure autonomy. The goal is not a single moment of "handover" but a continuous gradient — at every point, the community owns more than it did the year before.

Open Call competitions are a key mechanism for accelerating deprivatisation: by inviting the community to propose alternative models, WikiDeal institutionalises the idea that the current governance structure is always provisional, always open to improvement. No rule is permanent except the rule that rules can be changed by the community.