WebTree asks whether helping other participants succeed can become a dependable way to succeed yourself. Connecting people is only the beginning: ordinary marketplaces already do that.
The hypothesis
Clear commitments, useful outcome history, repeat interaction, and fair handling of problems may make dependable cooperation more attractive over time. The arrangement must also account for costs imposed on people outside the group.
What would make this different?
Each project needs to identify the rule it changes compared with an ordinary marketplace or collaboration tool. For MakeLocal, a first step could be documenting agreed requirements and production feedback so the next job can use what the previous one learned.
This is a proposed comparison, not an implemented cross-project incentive system.
What could go wrong?
Participants can collude, manufacture evidence, exclude newcomers, or cooperate at outsiders’ expense. Future business may be too uncertain to outweigh an immediate gain from cutting corners. Preserving history cannot make an unprofitable or impractical first transaction useful.
A useful next test
Compare a small production workflow with and without structured commitments and feedback. Examine rework, disputes, participant effort, and whether the record improves a later decision. Keep founder-operated fulfillment separate from independent Maker work.
Define the baseline, consent, evaluation criteria, and review point before starting. A positive result would support that arrangement under those conditions; it would not establish a universal solution.
The game-theory question
Cooperation stability is a property of a specified system. A Nash equilibrium concerns whether any participant can improve their payoff by changing strategy alone, given the others’ strategies. Calling something cooperative does not establish an equilibrium, uniqueness, fairness, or resilience to collusion.
The game, information, time horizon, outside options, and enforcement assumptions all need to be stated. Imprint is a contextual contribution interpretation; it is not a measure of system-level stability.
Status and revision
This is a concept note, not a reported experiment result. Maintained by the WebTree project team, led by Max Levitskiy. Initial public synthesis: 5 September 2026. Future revisions should state what changed and why.