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Creating ESCROW in code

acidburn

Active member
We all know that the biggest risk when trading goods for capital is the other person cannot always be trusted. So how does one go about creating an escrow automatically in code?

I was thinking that a guy advertises said product. Buyer A accepts the price and proceeds with that purchase. The advertiser would then give an escrow address to the bidder and dispatch the item. Then, once the bidder has relieved said item the funds are released to the seller. Very similar to eBay and PayPal.

I'm struggling to understand how the site would setup an escrow automatically.
 
We all know that the biggest risk when trading goods for capital is the other person cannot always be trusted. So how does one go about creating an escrow automatically in code?

I was thinking that a guy advertises said product. Buyer A accepts the price and proceeds with that purchase. The advertiser would then give an escrow address to the bidder and dispatch the item. Then, once the bidder has relieved said item the funds are released to the seller. Very similar to eBay and PayPal.

I'm struggling to understand how the site would setup an escrow automatically.
Maybe a 2-of-3 multisignature address is what you are looking for. Example : https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view/1867873
 
Thanks for that. It does help somewhat.

Now let's go for an eBay example. Seller puts a dad up for sale and demands 10 dash. At this point the seller includes his dash address.

The site has a wallet set for escrow and I presume the wallet can generate them on demand via an RPC call? Can you confirm this?

The buyer clicks buy. This is where I'm lost. Will the seller then put his address in which coins the 10 dash? And send them where? He's expecting an escrow guy to hold the funds whilst the did is posted out and gets into his possession. At which point either the seller or escrow can release the funds?
 
Maybe this will help you picture what needs to be done.
See https://voluntary.net/bitmarkets/

I said "whaaaaaat" at first, but then it hit me... quite an ingenious idea to deal with the 2 way escrow!
Only problem is you need to have double the funds for whatever purchase you want to make. Not a big deal with ordinary day to day stuff, but comparing the potential listings as to, say, ebay... Things can easily become way out of reach to both buyers and sellers. If you're selling stuff because you need the cash, there is a barrier right there.

Still, an ingenious idea indeed.

https://voluntary.net/bitmarkets/slides/Bitmarkets.pdf

Still think a reputation escrow system is best, like OpenBazaar. We'll see, it's not out yet. It does have it's pitfalls too... Interesting times...

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Well, if you don't want a "trust-less escrow" you will have to trust someone. You can either trust in oracles (kind of ok when they are decentralized, sybil-proof, and can acquire the necessary info), an escrow agent, or the vendor himself.
 
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