Why do we not already have a multi-sig escrow service?

[CIYAM]

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow I wonder why the existing trusted escrows don't just work together with P2SH N of M addresses for people to use with much greater confidence that they won't be scammed?

[franky1]

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow I wonder why the existing trusted escrows don't just work together with P2SH N of M addresses for people to use with much greater confidence that they won't be scammed?

it could happen, just needs:
user friendly method to perform it
tutorials

it seems most noobs on the trading category of this website have only just wrapped their heads around standard transaction types.
bitcoin lacks basic guides for noobs, something i thought charles hoskinson was meant to be working on.

its like ages ago i proposed for bitcoin based websites to not use usernames and passwords.. but to store a customers public key and then ask the customer to sign a random message using their private key and pasting the message into a login box..

seems it would solve alot of issues and at first light you would think that copying a random message and pressing sign, and copy and paste back was easy as pie.. but even that seemed too complicated for some services

[minifrij]

It's been discussed previously and I think the main problem is that few of the current forum escrows have been consulted or have discussed this between eachother/other trusted members of the community. There's also the consistent threat that previous incidents may be repeated in where several parties collude together/are the same person and can manipulate the deal regardless, making the multi-sig process nothing more than a waste of time or resources.
Personally I agree that it should be implemented in some description, however maintaining security and user-friendliness will be a struggle; may new users may not understand multi-sig addresses and be put off using escrow due to this.

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow

I wouldn't call it recent; it was around two months ago perhaps at this point.

[CIYAM]

I wouldn't call it recent; it was around two months ago perhaps at this point.

Okay - but the point remains the same - if the forum Escrow's need help with the software then I'll offer that for free.

[franky1]

I wouldn't call it recent; it was around two months ago perhaps at this point.

Okay - but the point remains the same - if the forum Escrow's need help with the software then I'll offer that for free.

yep, will have to be a separate GUI... afterall it cant ever be a 'shiny knob' feature in the 'bitcoin engine'.. you need to know RPC commands just to play with the 'engine'.

[CIYAM]

yep, will have to be a separate GUI... afterall it cant ever be a 'shiny knob' feature in the 'bitcoin engine'.. you need to know RPC commands just to play with the 'engine'.

The CIYAM UI is entirely HTML (so nothing difficult for anyone to use).

[OgNasty]

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow I wonder why the existing trusted escrows don't just work together with P2SH N of M addresses for people to use with much greater confidence that they won't be scammed?

I personally believe it would introduce more problems than it would solve.  There are a number of ways a malicious escrow agent could still cause issues and any attempt at software and hot wallets would be an invite to hackers.  A more "trusted" escrow system involving developers and more escrow agents seems to me like a bigger opening for a confidence scam.

Is confidence currently an issue?  I've handled single trades as large as 130 BTC within the last 60 days and was holding more than 650 BTC in escrow at that time...

[SFR10]

The ugly truth is that no matter how we try to tweak the ongoing escrow service, there's still room for possible failures/scams. Ever since the master-P incident I thought about the idea of trying to increase the safety a bit more without the need of direct involvement of some of the escrows. For example if possible, three or four escrow providers team up together and then the one who will act as the main escrow among them would have to put some BTCitcoins on reserve in both other escrows providers (like 2 BTC to a address that Escrow A only knows and same for Escrow B - Note: Only both escrow providers know the address in order to increase the safety in terms of being hacked once giving the address publicly so all they have to do is to sign a message on the same escrow thread and tell that their holding the 2BTC in case of something goes wrong with the main escrow and those funds would be used to repay everything and the main escrow should not take deals that it's more than worth the back up funds given to other escrow providers - In this case 2 BTC for each A and B so he could escrow up to 4 BTC). This way the situation will remain the same in terms of steps and it's security will improve. Hope the idea it's not bad.

[labwork]

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow I wonder why the existing trusted escrows don't just work together with P2SH N of M addresses for people to use with much greater confidence that they won't be scammed?

it could happen, just needs:
user friendly method to perform it
tutorials

it seems most noobs on the trading category of this website have only just wrapped their heads around standard transaction types.
bitcoin lacks basic guides for noobs, something i thought charles hoskinson was meant to be working on.

its like ages ago i proposed for bitcoin based websites to not use usernames and passwords.. but to store a customers public key and then ask the customer to sign a random message using their private key and pasting the message into a login box..

seems it would solve alot of issues and at first light you would think that copying a random message and pressing sign, and copy and paste back was easy as pie.. but even that seemed too complicated for some services

+1 for the tutorial idea

we could set up some sort of Fund to reward good tutorials

By good tutorials I mean well-written, noob-friendly tutorials

We could gather up some amount and pay X BTC to those who wrote tutorials on multiple subjects

And this could go even further, and we could put bounties for translations as well.

Of course we would need a trusted escrow to hold those funds

[frankenmint]

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow I wonder why the existing trusted escrows don't just work together with P2SH N of M addresses for people to use with much greater confidence that they won't be scammed?

it could happen, just needs:
user friendly method to perform it
tutorials

it seems most noobs on the trading category of this website have only just wrapped their heads around standard transaction types.
bitcoin lacks basic guides for noobs, something i thought charles hoskinson was meant to be working on.

its like ages ago i proposed for bitcoin based websites to not use usernames and passwords.. but to store a customers public key and then ask the customer to sign a random message using their private key and pasting the message into a login box..

seems it would solve alot of issues and at first light you would think that copying a random message and pressing sign, and copy and paste back was easy as pie.. but even that seemed too complicated for some services

oh yea - look at bitcoin-assets. I'm FOREVER locked out with frankenmint because my gpg private key is on a hard-drive (along with half a bitcoin ) that hasnt been in a computer for nearly three years.  My point is that decentralization where you are the absolute custodian of your security really encourages the concepts of 1-time use identification rather than to retain keypairs for authentication.

[crazy-igzo]

Seeing as there was a recent scandal with an Escrow I wonder why the existing trusted escrows don't just work together with P2SH N of M addresses for people to use with much greater confidence that they won't be scammed?

escrow scandal? escrow are are no more to be trusted?

[Yogafan00000]

How would multi-sig even work in a escrow scenario?

I wrote a working automated Bitcoin escrow application a few years ago purely as a programming exercise but it doesn't use multi-sig.  I am curious to know how multi-sig would even benefit anyone in escrow industry.

What would be advantages or disadvantages.

(if anyone is interested in demo the app, let me know)

[charleshoskinson]

it seems most noobs on the trading category of this website have only just wrapped their heads around standard transaction types.
bitcoin lacks basic guides for noobs, something i thought charles hoskinson was meant to be working on.

There is an enormous amount of free content online discussing bitcoin from the tutorials on the World Bitcoin Network, my class, the princeton class, the Nicosia MOOC, Andreas's book, Bitcoin meetups holding workshops, and probably a legion of things I'm not even aware of at the moment.

As for services and things like escrow, I have always made it a policy not to endorse any Bitcoin company because then I'd lose my objectivity and second so many of them go rogue that some of my students would eventually use a bad service and their loses were from my recommendation. Furthermore, I'm running a company at the moment and I have very little time to produce CCL content. After our R&D division is fully setup, I will allocate some of my schedule towards the second edition of the Udemy course, but honestly man I have a fiduciary obligation to my company to serve its needs first and foremost before pursuing more open source work.

[minifrij]

How would multi-sig even work in a escrow scenario?

I think the best implementations would be several trusted escrows all have a key to a multi-sig address (E.G 3 of 4), the buyer sends to the address these keys correspond to and notify the seller. The seller then sends the goods, and once at least 3 of the escrows are content with the seller following through they sign the address and release the funds to the seller.

What would be advantages or disadvantages.

The advantages and disadvantages of the above implementation are as follows (what I can think of).

Advantages:

• More secure as multiple parties sign off on the escrow rather than one.
• Can still function if one escrow is busy/unavailable.

Disadvantages:

• If multiple of the escrows are in collusion the parties involved could be lured into a false sense of security.
• If 3 out of the 4 escrows are not available the funds will not be able to be released.

In addition a good method of communication would have to be present between the escrows in order to discuss whether to release the funds. Dependant on how much information these escrows are willing to give out this may be a problem.

[franky1]

it seems most noobs on the trading category of this website have only just wrapped their heads around standard transaction types.
bitcoin lacks basic guides for noobs, something i thought charles hoskinson was meant to be working on.

There is an enormous amount of free content online discussing bitcoin from the tutorials on the World Bitcoin Network, my class, the princeton class, the Nicosia MOOC, Andreas's book, Bitcoin meetups holding workshops, and probably a legion of things I'm not even aware of at the moment.

As for services and things like escrow, I have always made it a policy not to endorse any Bitcoin company because then I'd lose my objectivity and second so many of them go rogue that some of my students would eventually use a bad service and their loses were from my recommendation. Furthermore, I'm running a company at the moment and I have very little time to produce CCL content. After our R&D division is fully setup, I will allocate some of my schedule towards the second edition of the Udemy course, but honestly man I have a fiduciary obligation to my company to serve its needs first and foremost before pursuing more open source work.

i know you prefer to do the acedemic detailed and technical education. but is there anyone that is involved in the basic "noob guides"?

i thought that blockstream with their price waterhouse backing was meant to be the go to location for the technical /business integration stuff.. but there needs to also be a part of the "foundation" that is there for common users.

EG apple have a technical section for the IOS interested parties and developers. but they also have a "consumer" department too for their front end features, that doesnt waffle about the technical stuff. i dont even think the consumer stuff even mentions the words IOS that often. they just make laymen demonstrations of how to use basic features.. if you get my drift

[charleshoskinson]

World bitcoin network has some really good youtube guides for noobs

[franky1]

World bitcoin network has some really good youtube guides for noobs

that guy is great.. but the first day someone gets interested in bitcoin, it needs to be laymen demonstration. then lesson 2 gets more technical explanation, lesson 3 gets even more technical code snippets..

for instance if
5=consumers
1=github repo's

the guy in the world bitcoin network video's is a 2-3.

bitcoin needs alot more concentration on level 5 consumer based services, options and tutorials

less buzzword wizardry and theory. more layman demonstration.
as i said before on a different page making an escrow (multisig) should not be a command prompt technique where users have to try remember the spellings of the command and the formatting of the brackets, comma's and speachmarks.

the way i imagine it..

imagine you meet a woman in a bar
you dont say i am a trader of a trustless world wide decentralized cryptographically secure public ledger token.
you would say. i trade international currencies

and when they seem interested. you dont say "to use it you need to RPC call createmultisig <nrequired> <‘[“key”,”key”]’>, add the .."
instead you say, "let me show you, let me buy you a drink, waitress ill have bottle of champagne, can you display your QR code so i can pay"

as i think that is the problem with the whole escrow thing.
1. they are bombarded with technical waffle that bitcoin is a trustless peer to peer, blah blah that doesnt need central oversight.. so that makes them think they dont have to worry about trust.
then they know RPC commands are like speaking chinese to a texas rancher, so they just do what they would do on paypal and hand the money over to some stranger who says they offer a escrow payment service

[bitlost]

World bitcoin network has some really good youtube guides for noobs

that guy is great.. but the first day someone gets interested in bitcoin, it needs to be laymen demonstration. then lesson 2 gets more technical explanation, lesson 3 gets even more technical code snippets..

for instance if
5=consumers
1=github repo's

the guy in the world bitcoin network video's is a 2-3.

bitcoin needs alot more concentration on level 5 consumer based services, options and tutorials

less buzzword wizardry and theory. more layman demonstration.
as i said before on a different page making an escrow (multisig) should not be a command prompt technique where users have to try remember the spellings of the command and the formatting of the brackets, comma's and speachmarks.

the way i imagine it..

imagine you meet a woman in a bar
you dont say i am a trader of a trustless world wide decentralized cryptographically secure public ledger token.
you would say. i trade international currencies

and when they seem interested. you dont say "to use it you need to RPC call createmultisig <nrequired> <‘[“key”,”key”]’>, add the .."
instead you say, "let me show you, let me buy you a drink, waitress ill have bottle of champagne, can you display your QR code so i can pay"

as i think that is the problem with the whole escrow thing.
1. they are bombarded with technical waffle that bitcoin is a trustless peer to peer, blah blah that doesnt need central oversight.. so that makes them think they dont have to worry about trust.
then they know RPC commands are like speaking chinese to a texas rancher, so they just do what they would do on paypal and hand the money over to some stranger who says they offer a escrow payment service

"speaking chinese to a texas rancher"

That made me laugh a lot.

So, what you are saying is that there is no YT channel or anything like that for the common people?

In Brazil we have several services directed to newbies, like the channel owning this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJRRIABi3-s

Note that in description there are several tutorials and guides.

This is very widespread in all btc community over here (which is still ridiculously small, though). Many people get in touch with the technology first through this easy-to-understand content, and this is helping btc grow in the country. Trading volumes in local exchanges sky-rocketed in 2015 (volume increased by multiples near 4x).

Brazilian people are known as adopters of new technologies. Maybe something similar needs to be done seriously for other languages and countries. There's also money in there, you see.

One could build partnerships with local exchanges, etc.  

[lostintranslation]

World bitcoin network has some really good youtube guides for noobs

that guy is great.. but the first day someone gets interested in bitcoin, it needs to be laymen demonstration. then lesson 2 gets more technical explanation, lesson 3 gets even more technical code snippets..

for instance if
5=consumers
1=github repo's

the guy in the world bitcoin network video's is a 2-3.

bitcoin needs alot more concentration on level 5 consumer based services, options and tutorials

less buzzword wizardry and theory. more layman demonstration.
as i said before on a different page making an escrow (multisig) should not be a command prompt technique where users have to try remember the spellings of the command and the formatting of the brackets, comma's and speachmarks.

the way i imagine it..

imagine you meet a woman in a bar
you dont say i am a trader of a trustless world wide decentralized cryptographically secure public ledger token.
you would say. i trade international currencies

and when they seem interested. you dont say "to use it you need to RPC call createmultisig <nrequired> <‘[“key”,”key”]’>, add the .."
instead you say, "let me show you, let me buy you a drink, waitress ill have bottle of champagne, can you display your QR code so i can pay"

as i think that is the problem with the whole escrow thing.
1. they are bombarded with technical waffle that bitcoin is a trustless peer to peer, blah blah that doesnt need central oversight.. so that makes them think they dont have to worry about trust.
then they know RPC commands are like speaking chinese to a texas rancher, so they just do what they would do on paypal and hand the money over to some stranger who says they offer a escrow payment service

"speaking chinese to a texas rancher"

That made me laugh a lot.

So, what you are saying is that there is no YT channel or anything like that for the common people?

In Brazil we have several services directed to newbies, like the channel owning this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJRRIABi3-s

Note that in description there are several tutorials and guides.

This is very widespread in all btc community over here (which is still ridiculously small, though). Many people get in touch with the technology first through this easy-to-understand content, and this is helping btc grow in the country. Trading volumes in local exchanges sky-rocketed in 2015 (volume increased by multiples near 4x).

Brazilian people are known as adopters of new technologies. Maybe something similar needs to be done seriously for other languages and countries. There's also money in there, you see.

One could build partnerships with local exchanges, etc.  

Interesting. Translations of description between brackets:

Curso de Bitcoin para novatos [bitcoin course for newbies]
https://bitcointalk.org/annoyance.php
Corretoras de todo o mundo [exchanges around the world]
http://exchangewar.info
Lojas que aceitam Bitcoin
http://lojabitcoin.blogspot.com.br/

Pague boletos e contas com Bitcoin: [pay bills with bitcoin] (it's also possible to recharge pre-paid phone lines through theses sites. Since 90% of Brazilian population owns prepaid, it's a powerful tool to help spread the word about btc).

https://coinverse.com.br/
http://bitcointoyou.com/
http://www.paguecombitcoin.com/