Short versionThe current methods to transfer domain ownership require one party to put himself in a position where the other party could rip him off or the use of a slow, expensive, fallible and corruptible middleman (escrow).
The bitcoin solution is an open source smart contract with an oracle that receives the buyers bitcoin then monitors the domain’s whois information for the change of ownership then transfers the bitcoins to the seller.
This requires no change to any laws, no change to the ICANN domain name registration system and no change at the domain registrars. We can do this today!
Long version with more detailshttp://www.bitedge.co/blog/smart-contract-to-trustlessly-transfer-domain-ownership/ You are right about that escrows are a risk. Though at least it seems escrows on here are trustworthy till now. I did not hear of a major scam.
But what you say is very limited in usage cases. Escrow can't be automated for many cases. You need a third trusted party that can moderate in case of dispute.
Your way only can be used when all things can be done digitally.