How the money and the evidence move
Escrow is the product. Everything else on this marketplace is decoration on top of one question: who holds the money while two strangers decide whether a piece of software is what it claimed to be.
- $2.4M
- escrow volume
- 1204
- active escrows
- 4 min
- median payout
- 1.9%
- dispute rate
- 84%
- settled without a ruling
The escrow flow
- 01
Funds held
The buyer pays into escrow. The seller can see the escrow exists and cannot touch the money. We cannot spend it either.
- 02
Artifact sealed
The seller uploads the bundle. We hash it, store it, and release access to the buyer. Both sides are now bound to a specific set of bytes.
- 03
Inspection window
48 hours by default, extendable once by the buyer. This is where a buyer runs the thing, not where they change their mind about wanting it.
- 04
Confirmation
One buyer action releases the funds. There is no review queue on our side and no pending state invented to hold your money longer.
- 05
Payout
Instant for reserve-backed Tier 2 merchants. Otherwise funds clear after the dispute window, because a refund has to still be possible.
Instant payout, honestly
Instant crypto payout and a real dispute window are in direct conflict. Money that has already left cannot be refunded. Anyone promising both without qualification is either eating the losses quietly or is about to.
Our resolution: instant payout is underwritten, not universal. Tier 2 merchants keep a rolling reserve, a slice of their own earnings, which covers refunds if a dispute goes against them after they have been paid. The reserve grows with volume and shrinks with dispute rate. Every other merchant clears after the window.
Payout eligibility
- — Tier 1 verified: funds clear 24 hours after the window closes.
- — Tier 2, reserve below threshold: same as Tier 1.
- — Tier 2, reserve above threshold: instant, median four minutes.
- — Any open dispute: payout frozen regardless of tier.
Disputes
An AI mediator joins the channel with the case file: the artifact hash, both claims, and the evidence list. It narrows the facts, names which side the evidence favours, and proposes a remedy. It does not move money.
- — A 12-hour grace period runs first, on purpose. 84% of disputes end here without anyone ruling on anything.
- — Off-platform moves are flagged in-channel. Leaving this channel ends coverage.
- — Either party can escalate to human review before a recommendation is executed.
- — Remedies: docs fix, patch, partial refund, full refund, or release.
What we store
"We store nothing" would be a lie, and a lie about data is worse than the data. Mediation requires a record. Here is the actual list.
Never held by us. Our KYC partner holds them; we receive a pass or fail and a jurisdiction.
Never held by us. Handled by the payment processor.
Held for the length of the dispute window plus 30 days, then the bundle is deleted and only the hash is retained.
Retained for 12 months, because a merchant's dispute history is the thing that makes reputation real.
Retained with the dispute. Sent to the model to produce a response; not used to train anything.
Retained indefinitely. It is financial record-keeping and we are not permitted to delete it.
This is a working prototype. Escrow states, merchants, and disputes shown across the site are seed data used to demonstrate the flows end to end. The mediation channel on a dispute page calls a live model. Nothing here moves real money yet.