What would you do with a distributed escrow system?

[BitClad]

At Bitcoin 2013 there was a fair bit of talk about the need for a distributed escrow. While it would be a great technical achievement, I didn't hear much talk about how it would actually be used. I have a concept that I am thinking of working on, that could add such functionality. But I am interested in what use-cases you guys envision? What do you think the key use-cases would be?

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[Elwar]

At Bitcoin 2013 there was a fair bit of talk about the need for a distributed escrow. While it would be a great technical achievement, I didn't hear much talk about how it would actually be used. I have a concept that I am thinking of working on, that could add such functionality. But I am interested in what use-cases you guys envision? What do you think the key use-cases would be?

How exactly does a distributed escrow work? Is there someone that still decides which party was right and which was wrong?

[tvbcof]

At Bitcoin 2013 there was a fair bit of talk about the need for a distributed escrow. While it would be a great technical achievement, I didn't hear much talk about how it would actually be used. I have a concept that I am thinking of working on, that could add such functionality. But I am interested in what use-cases you guys envision? What do you think the key use-cases would be?

Recently I was part of a group buy and was thinking of ways to automate things.  This led to the following rough outline:

 - an organization employing a number of escrow agents who's qualifications are advertised.

 - a 'job' would assign one of the escrow agents and he/she would work closely with the client (project owner) to obtain identity information and familiarity with the task.

 - project participants (who cough up funds) would fund individual green addresses which they retain access to.  They could withdraw their support at any time by withdrawing funds (making this an unusual escrow...'youscrow' and 'yescrow' and 'mescrow' domains were taken   Communications about participation and decisions would be understood by simply evaluating the funding level green addresses.

 - The project owner would propose a funding need by a vote and the results would be weighted in relation to how much funding each participant had.

 - Funding would be obtained from the participants account by a scripted operation.  The escrow agent would evaluate the votes and execute the script to transfer funds.

 - The escrow agent would probably have to obtain cooperation from another escrow agent at the 'office' in order to execute the script.  A reasonable number of escrow agents could execute scripts absent the primary agent (to avoid hit-by-a-bus accidents.)

 - The addresses would probably exist on a very secure system where only script execution was allowed (no logins, for instance.)

 - The entire escrow company would be backed by a bond which was sufficient to cover the costs of accidents to any one of the underway projects (loss of secure machine or some such.)

Such an elaborate setup would probably be overkill except for expensive and complex projects.  The project I had in mind was related to commissioning the development, production, and delivery of a new piece of hardware.  If anyone wants to steal the idea, or parts of it, please do.  I'm much more interested in using such a solution than in working on development of it.

[waxwing]

What I tried to described here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=210903.0 is critically dependent on escrow. Depending on exactly what you mean by "distributed" escrow, it could be either very useful or necessary.

[Elwar]

At Bitcoin 2013 there was a fair bit of talk about the need for a distributed escrow. While it would be a great technical achievement, I didn't hear much talk about how it would actually be used. I have a concept that I am thinking of working on, that could add such functionality. But I am interested in what use-cases you guys envision? What do you think the key use-cases would be?

Recently I was part of a group buy and was thinking of ways to automate things.  This led to the following rough outline:

 - an organization employing a number of escrow agents who's qualifications are advertised.

 - a 'job' would assign one of the escrow agents and he/she would work closely with the client (project owner) to obtain identity information and familiarity with the task.

 - project participants (who cough up funds) would fund individual green addresses which they retain access to.  They could withdraw their support at any time by withdrawing funds (making this an unusual escrow...'youscrow' and 'yescrow' and 'mescrow' domains were taken   Communications about participation and decisions would be understood by simply evaluating the funding level green addresses.

 - The project owner would propose a funding need by a vote and the results would be weighted in relation to how much funding each participant had.

 - Funding would be obtained from the participants account by a scripted operation.  The escrow agent would evaluate the votes and execute the script to transfer funds.

 - The escrow agent would probably have to obtain cooperation from another escrow agent at the 'office' in order to execute the script.  A reasonable number of escrow agents could execute scripts absent the primary agent (to avoid hit-by-a-bus accidents.)

 - The addresses would probably exist on a very secure system where only script execution was allowed (no logins, for instance.)

 - The entire escrow company would be backed by a bond which was sufficient to cover the costs of accidents to any one of the underway projects (loss of secure machine or some such.)

Such an elaborate setup would probably be overkill except for expensive and complex projects.  The project I had in mind was related to commissioning the development, production, and delivery of a new piece of hardware.  If anyone wants to steal the idea, or parts of it, please do.  I'm much more interested in using such a solution than in working on development of it.

What you describe is similar to my BitPools concept in my signature. I hope to begin testing in about 2 weeks.

[tvbcof]

What you describe is similar to my BitPools concept in my signature. I hope to begin testing in about 2 weeks.

Oh, cool!  Ya, it looks like there are some strong parallels.

I being so vocal in my opposition to using small transactions on the Bitcoin network proper as a messaging system, I envisioned voting being implemented by signing messages with the private key.

I also have struggled mightily with ways of avoiding needing to trust the operator(s) of the secure systems which hold funds, or basically any entity which has the theoretical capability of absconding with a lot of funds from a lot of projects at one time.  A significant bond and a time-lock system which allows control of only one storage system at a time with a delay between them is one possibility.  So, say I owned the escrow company and set up a secure platform for each of a bunch of projects.  An external auditor/escrow person could perhaps control my ability to access each vault system (though said person could never access the vaults themselves or at least not with a lot of cooperation with others.)

[Elwar]

So, say I owned the escrow company and set up a secure platform for each of a bunch of projects.  An external auditor/escrow person could perhaps control my ability to access each vault system (though said person could never access the vaults themselves or at least not with a lot of cooperation with others.)

I like Evorhees's software that allows for both parties to send money to one address (in this case only one party) where a third party has control of which person gets the money but does not have access to the funds.

In an "anarchist" judicial system, two parties choose their "judge" (could be the same judge or two different ones). They present their evidence to that judge/s and the judge decides a verdict. If both judges come to different conclusions, they then move the case up to a random judge that imparts the final verdict.

The same could be done with this system. Some members of the community can present themselves as impartial judges, they would gain credibility for their impartiality. They would be paid a cut of the amount being argued over.

[tvbcof]

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The same could be done with this system. Some members of the community can present themselves as impartial judges, they would gain credibility for their impartiality. They would be paid a cut of the amount being argued over.

Shifting from 'escrow' to 'arbitration', I naturally had some ideas about that to   Over a year ago.

A nutshell run-down was something of a 'arbitration guild' where anyone who wanted to use the system was available for 'jury duty' as it were.

A conflict would result in an odd number of juror/arbitrators being called.

As much as possible, evidence would be presented in public for public comment.  A decision to call for arbitration would likely result in some private evidence becoming public which could be a good or bad thing, but it is optional and up to the individual to weigh the pros and cons as he/she chooses.

The selected juror/arbitrators would remain jealously anonymous.  Attempts to circumvent this anonymity here would result in expulsion from the guild.

juror/arbitrators would be rated by the community.  Excessively lop-sided ratings could result in a re-arbitration.

Again, anyone who is interested is more than welcome to use some of these ideas.  I did not see, nor did I look very hard for a way to monetize things but I imagine it would be possible.  I would gladly pay dues and fees to use such a solution if it worked reasonable well.

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Getting back to a more political frame of mind, I am not an anarchist or libertarian and have no great built-in hatred of government.  I do believe that many traditional government functions are, by nature, inefficient and mine (the US) is increasingly corrupt and failing to represent individuals fairly.  And I do not believe that touchy-feely democracy is likely to fix it.

I believe that efforts such as the distributed crypto-currency movement have the ability to apply simple sound engineering to many of the problems that we rely on state sponsored legal system for at this time.  Thus, I am in favor of such efforts and think about them regularly.  The ability to freely choose such solutions is what I consider 'liberty'.

[BTCLuke]

I've totally figured out decentralized Escrow over in this thread, at least for cryptocurrencies:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=212841.0

[gokumarket]

Escrow is a third party trusted platform that holds and disburses the digital asset (or any held entity) once both the parties agree on the exchange. A distributed escrow system is mainly used for the payment release and for the decentralized e-commerce platform while performing the secure transactions.