Re: Updated Overview of Bitcointalk Signature-Ad Campaigns

[Honeybooboo]

Escrow, as I see it, works like this:

• A company wants to run a signature campaign, but they are to busy to do it themself, so a campaign manager is hired.
• This campaign manager will be given BTC to payout the participants in the signature campaign at the end of every cycle (monthly, weekly, etc).
• Some people may not trust the person doing the signature campaign, so they ask them to do escrow.
• The person doing escrow will hold an amount of BTC to cover for +- one payment cycle
• If something goes wrong in the campaign (manager disappears, funds are gone, etc), the person doing escrow will use the BTC that has been escrowed to pay out the people in the signature campaign.

In an ideal world, the person doing escrow would hold onto the BTC until the signature campaign is over. But more often than not the BTC is returned after a few successful cycles.

However, seeing that this isn't always the case (devthedev paying out for dadice) I'm considering to put signature campaigns as escrowed if the person paying isn't the same as the person managing the campaign, has some decent trust on this forum and isn't affiliated with the company itself. So the dadice campaign would be soon as escrowed, but the Bit-X wouldn't be, because marcotheminer both manages the campaign and pays the participants.

Opinions about this are welcome.

It sounds like you are asking for double escrow. The company (da-dice, or bit-x in your above examples) and the ones buying the advertisements, and then a trusted third party that is separate from the company should hold funds to cover the cost of the advertising. Who actually pays the participants is merely semantics. If the escrow runs away then the company needs to pay their advertisers directly themselves. If the company runs away then the escrow can step in to pay directly.

Under your definition the company buying the advertisements needs to give funds to person C (escrow) to hold and person B (the campaign manager) to pay participants with, or needs to pay everyone themselves, but that would negate the point of hiring person B in the first place. You are asking that they put aside double their advertising budget in order to be considered "escrowed" and many smaller companies may not be able to afford to put aside that much money all at once as small companies often have a small budget

I agree with this. If a third part such as devthedev is involved then it should be considered escrowed. If a new campaign arrives and they have a trusted escrower running it or holding the funds then that's escrowed too. If a new campaign comes along and hires someone else trusted to run and hold the funds like evilpanda or hillariousandco then I think that should be considered escrowed too. I don't think there needs to be a trusted campaign manager and a trusted escrow.

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[Muhammed Zakir]

Yes but he just says considering.  I think it's worthwhile to argue that this is indeed the right path and IMO rikkie makes a very good point that he's actually asking for double escrow if he doesn't change this.  I'm definitely in the camp where it doesn't matter who does the payout but it does very much matter whether the "escrow" is affiliated with the company.

I agree with this. If a third part such as devthedev is involved then it should be considered escrowed. If a new campaign arrives and they have a trusted escrower running it or holding the funds then that's escrowed too. If a new campaign comes along and hires someone else trusted to run and hold the funds like evilpanda or hillariousandco then I think that should be considered escrowed too. I don't think there needs to be a trusted campaign manager and a trusted escrow.

IMHO if the person who escrow the funds isn't running the campaign. Then it is escrowed, else not.

[sho_road_warrior]

Since we are just gathering opinions and I have little time to elaborate my position, Ill just say Im with tspacepilot here. 3rd party holding funds should be enough.

[Honeybooboo]

Yes but he just says considering.  I think it's worthwhile to argue that this is indeed the right path and IMO rikkie makes a very good point that he's actually asking for double escrow if he doesn't change this.  I'm definitely in the camp where it doesn't matter who does the payout but it does very much matter whether the "escrow" is affiliated with the company.

I agree with this. If a third part such as devthedev is involved then it should be considered escrowed. If a new campaign arrives and they have a trusted escrower running it or holding the funds then that's escrowed too. If a new campaign comes along and hires someone else trusted to run and hold the funds like evilpanda or hillariousandco then I think that should be considered escrowed too. I don't think there needs to be a trusted campaign manager and a trusted escrow.

IMHO if the person who escrow the funds isn't running the campaign. Then it is escrowed, else not.

Why can't a escrow run the campaign? It doesn't make sense to involve yet another. In fact it just seems to be adding potentially more problems. If the escrow is a third party and trusted then they should be ok. People don't need to hire both a trusted escrower and a trusted campaign manager.

[rikkie]

Escrow, as I see it, works like this:

• A company wants to run a signature campaign, but they are to busy to do it themself, so a campaign manager is hired.
• This campaign manager will be given BTC to payout the participants in the signature campaign at the end of every cycle (monthly, weekly, etc).
• Some people may not trust the person doing the signature campaign, so they ask them to do escrow.
• The person doing escrow will hold an amount of BTC to cover for +- one payment cycle
• If something goes wrong in the campaign (manager disappears, funds are gone, etc), the person doing escrow will use the BTC that has been escrowed to pay out the people in the signature campaign.

In an ideal world, the person doing escrow would hold onto the BTC until the signature campaign is over. But more often than not the BTC is returned after a few successful cycles.

However, seeing that this isn't always the case (devthedev paying out for dadice) I'm considering to put signature campaigns as escrowed if the person paying isn't the same as the person managing the campaign, has some decent trust on this forum and isn't affiliated with the company itself. So the dadice campaign would be soon as escrowed, but the Bit-X wouldn't be, because marcotheminer both manages the campaign and pays the participants.

Opinions about this are welcome.

It sounds like you are asking for double escrow. The company (da-dice, or bit-x in your above examples) and the ones buying the advertisements, and then a trusted third party that is separate from the company should hold funds to cover the cost of the advertising. Who actually pays the participants is merely semantics. If the escrow runs away then the company needs to pay their advertisers directly themselves. If the company runs away then the escrow can step in to pay directly.

Under your definition the company buying the advertisements needs to give funds to person C (escrow) to hold and person B (the campaign manager) to pay participants with, or needs to pay everyone themselves, but that would negate the point of hiring person B in the first place. You are asking that they put aside double their advertising budget in order to be considered "escrowed" and many smaller companies may not be able to afford to put aside that much money all at once as small companies often have a small budget

I agree with this. If a third part such as devthedev is involved then it should be considered escrowed. If a new campaign arrives and they have a trusted escrower running it or holding the funds then that's escrowed too. If a new campaign comes along and hires someone else trusted to run and hold the funds like evilpanda or hillariousandco then I think that should be considered escrowed too. I don't think there needs to be a trusted campaign manager and a trusted escrow.

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

[Honeybooboo]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

[tspacepilot]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

Except that, again, the definition of escrow is funds held by a third party.  If the person holding the funds is the campaign manager then this is by definition not escrowed.  This doesn't mean that there's a problem.  Many deals can go down without escrow when all parties trust each other.

Similarly, you're absolutely right that when something is escrowed, the person doing the escrow had better be a trusted person.  But that doesn't change the definition of escrow.

[Honeybooboo]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

Except that, again, the definition of escrow is funds held by a third party.  If the person holding the funds is the campaign manager then this is by definition not escrowed.  This doesn't mean that there's a problem.  Many deals can go down without escrow when all parties trust each other.

The third party is the trusted campaign manager. Say if Johnny the Random Bitcoin Newb wants to start a signature campaign for his dice site he could employ a campaign manager like evilpanda or hillariousandco or whoever and then that money is escrowed in my eyes. They don't need to bring in another trusted escrower just because they're running the campaign unless the campaign manager they hired isn't trusted themselves (though they may become so in the future).

[rikkie]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

Except that, again, the definition of escrow is funds held by a third party.  If the person holding the funds is the campaign manager then this is by definition not escrowed.  This doesn't mean that there's a problem.  Many deals can go down without escrow when all parties trust each other.

Similarly, you're absolutely right that when something is escrowed, the person doing the escrow had better be a trusted person.  But that doesn't change the definition of escrow.

The campaign manager is not the one buying the advertising, the company is. The buyer is the company who the participants are advertising for. The seller is the various participants and the escrow is the manager. I really don't think it can be any more clear cut then that

[ndnh]

Escrow, as I see it, works like this:

• A company wants to run a signature campaign, but they are to busy to do it themself, so a campaign manager is hired.
• This campaign manager will be given BTC to payout the participants in the signature campaign at the end of every cycle (monthly, weekly, etc).
• Some people may not trust the person doing the signature campaign, so they ask them to do escrow.
• The person doing escrow will hold an amount of BTC to cover for +- one payment cycle
• If something goes wrong in the campaign (manager disappears, funds are gone, etc), the person doing escrow will use the BTC that has been escrowed to pay out the people in the signature campaign.

In an ideal world, the person doing escrow would hold onto the BTC until the signature campaign is over. But more often than not the BTC is returned after a few successful cycles.

However, seeing that this isn't always the case (devthedev paying out for dadice) I'm considering to put signature campaigns as escrowed if the person paying isn't the same as the person managing the campaign, has some decent trust on this forum and isn't affiliated with the company itself. So the dadice campaign would be soon as escrowed, but the Bit-X wouldn't be, because marcotheminer both manages the campaign and pays the participants.

Opinions about this are welcome.

First, let us define escrow:

DEFINITION OF 'ESCROW'
A financial instrument held by a third party on behalf of the other two parties in a transaction. The funds are held by the escrow service until it receives the appropriate written or oral instructions or until obligations have been fulfilled. Securities, funds and other assets can be held in escrow.

Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/escrow.asp

The system dadice uses can be covered under this.
Working:
Bitcoins that cover more than maximum payment, including bonus and escrow fee, rounded up, amounts to 8BTC, which will be held by escrow at any point of time (excluding the brief gap between payment and refilling). Once the posts are counted, the payment amount, along with username and address are sent to devthedev, the escrow (which is also reflected in the spreadsheet on the third tab), who then releases the funds to the participants of the signature campaign.

I think what most campaigns use is a similar but kind of a more efficient system. There is a little more work of sending payments that escrow got to do. But 3% fee covers that part.

In addition, there is a campaign manager, co-manager, and an escrow. If you still consider that the same as a situation in which I control everything, it would really be weird..

In an ideal world, the person doing escrow would hold onto the BTC until the signature campaign is over.

It is almost the same. Only the until the campaign is over part is split into weekly ones and the escrow directly releases the funds to the parties.


Yeah, I support the view. You may consider dadice campaign as escrowed, since there is already 3 parties involved and I, bf4btc or devthedev are not affiliated to dadice.


Thanks

[abyrnes81]

It is almost the same. Only the until the campaign is over part is split into weekly ones and the escrow directly releases the funds to the parties.

Yeah it is almost the same, but a true escrow should not be "involved" until who run the signature campaign will stop the payments. In that case the escrow will "stand up" and pay all the users (if all the agreement was respected). Like bitcoininformation aka Mitchełł  did with the old dicebitcoin sig campaign (that was turned in a scam after 2-3 months).

[marcotheminer]

I don't think it really matters if there is a 'N' instead of a 'Y' in this campaign overview thread, as long as the member ultimately running the campaign is trusted.

Just stick to Mitchell's definition (that the escrow must have additional balance in case participants aren't paid)

[arallmuus]

I don't think it really matters if there is a 'N' instead of a 'Y' in this campaign overview thread, as long as the member ultimately running the campaign is trusted.

Just stick to Mitchell's definition (that the escrow must have additional balance in case participants aren't paid)

Reading few back and This would have been the best answer and logic to define why bit-x isnt considered as an escrowed  campaign

lets say I want to buy something from devthedev and I dont trust devthedev (devthedev if you are reading this, not my intention to say that i dont trust you, basically just for example  )
devthedev would say, okay you dont need to trust me, we can use escrow
Then after short while , it turns out devthedev is the escrow mentioned

To sum it right, the definition of escrow would be

escrow is 3rd party that to keeps the money , that suppose to be neutral and got no connection with the deal

this is of course just an indicator

[tspacepilot]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

Except that, again, the definition of escrow is funds held by a third party.  If the person holding the funds is the campaign manager then this is by definition not escrowed.  This doesn't mean that there's a problem.  Many deals can go down without escrow when all parties trust each other.

Similarly, you're absolutely right that when something is escrowed, the person doing the escrow had better be a trusted person.  But that doesn't change the definition of escrow.

The campaign manager is not the one buying the advertising, the company is. The buyer is the company who the participants are advertising for. The seller is the various participants and the escrow is the manager. I really don't think it can be any more clear cut then that

But if the campaign manager is being paid by the company then that's the conflict of interest which makes him not an escrow.  Again, consider if you want to by my restaurant.  I say, okay just send the money to the escrow which is my restaurant manager and then I'll know you're serious and we'll sit down and discuss the contract.  The restaurant manager works for me so he isn't a third party.  For a third party you need someone who isn't otherwise employed by either party.

[Searing]

Just a heads up this campaign ASKCOIN (which I had for 1 week and they have just paid out my 0.025 btc for over 25 posts) is now suspended

here is the link

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=957899.msg10789696#msg10789696

I just left that campaign yesterday ...and went with the one below if anyone is interested ...

anyway ...whatever ..but askcoin is now defunct....fyi for the thread op ..good luck on anyone with askcoin and the search for a new tagline ..hopefully it all

works out for everyone

[Quickseller]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

Except that, again, the definition of escrow is funds held by a third party.  If the person holding the funds is the campaign manager then this is by definition not escrowed.  This doesn't mean that there's a problem.  Many deals can go down without escrow when all parties trust each other.

Similarly, you're absolutely right that when something is escrowed, the person doing the escrow had better be a trusted person.  But that doesn't change the definition of escrow.

The campaign manager is not the one buying the advertising, the company is. The buyer is the company who the participants are advertising for. The seller is the various participants and the escrow is the manager. I really don't think it can be any more clear cut then that

But if the campaign manager is being paid by the company then that's the conflict of interest which makes him not an escrow.  Again, consider if you want to by my restaurant.  I say, okay just send the money to the escrow which is my restaurant manager and then I'll know you're serious and we'll sit down and discuss the contract.  The restaurant manager works for me so he isn't a third party.  For a third party you need someone who isn't otherwise employed by either party.

That does not matter. The vast majority of escrow transactions have one specific party pay for the escrow service. If for example the buyer is paying the 1% escrow fee, the escrow provider is not going to to give money back to the buyer when it would not be appropriate to do so.

[redsn0w]

It would make more sense to evaluate the level of trust that should be given to the person actually holding the funds, as well as how payments are made. If payments are made directly to a website account then obviously the campaign should not be considered to be escrowed because the escrow has zero way to know for sure if anyone got paid or not. If you have some unknown person with no prior trade history or someone who is farming trust then it should be safe to say that the campaign should not be considered escrowed

I agree they should be trusted. It should only be considered escrowed if the funds are held by an existing trusted escrower like devthedev or another trusted member with previous history of payouts like evilpanda or hillariousandco. I simply think if one of the latter two were running a campaign there wouldn't need to be another escrow involved before it was considered escrowed. I think by having one of those run and hold the funds it should be considered escrowed by that fact.

Except that, again, the definition of escrow is funds held by a third party.  If the person holding the funds is the campaign manager then this is by definition not escrowed.  This doesn't mean that there's a problem.  Many deals can go down without escrow when all parties trust each other.

Similarly, you're absolutely right that when something is escrowed, the person doing the escrow had better be a trusted person.  But that doesn't change the definition of escrow.

The campaign manager is not the one buying the advertising, the company is. The buyer is the company who the participants are advertising for. The seller is the various participants and the escrow is the manager. I really don't think it can be any more clear cut then that

But if the campaign manager is being paid by the company then that's the conflict of interest which makes him not an escrow.  Again, consider if you want to by my restaurant.  I say, okay just send the money to the escrow which is my restaurant manager and then I'll know you're serious and we'll sit down and discuss the contract.  The restaurant manager works for me so he isn't a third party.  For a third party you need someone who isn't otherwise employed by either party.

That does not matter. The vast majority of escrow transactions have one specific party pay for the escrow service. If for example the buyer is paying the 1% escrow fee, the escrow provider is not going to to give money back to the buyer when it would not be appropriate to do so.

I think an escrow should be trusted by all the two "parts", but in this case who the enrolled users should trust, the site or the manager? A real escrow service has not been still created (just my personal opinion, purely random cases).

[ndnh]

Just stick to Mitchell's definition (that the escrow must have additional balance in case participants aren't paid)

The thing is, there won't be an instance in which the participants won't be paid.

[Mitchell]

Just stick to Mitchell's definition (that the escrow must have additional balance in case participants aren't paid)

The thing is, there won't be an instance in which the participants won't be paid.

Not true. It has happened a few times. If needed I'll provide sources, but right now, I'm too busy to look em up.

[abyrnes81]

Just stick to Mitchell's definition (that the escrow must have additional balance in case participants aren't paid)

The thing is, there won't be an instance in which the participants won't be paid.

Not true. It has happened a few times. If needed I'll provide sources, but right now, I'm too busy to look em up.

Can you provide the sources?  I am really interested to see them (when you will have 5 minutes of free time).


Thanks.