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What recourse would a buyer have if they pay, and then never receive an item? If your answer to that is, "smart contract wouldn't release funds until they verif

What recourse would a buyer have if they pay, and then never receive an item? If your answer to that is, "smart contract wouldn't release funds until they verify they've received item", then what recourse would a seller have if they send product, but the user never completes the transaction and verifies that they received the product? This isn't a pithy response, I'm genuinely curious how this kind of thing could be worked around. Independent third party mediator that can contact both parties to figure out what happened (perhaps incentivized with a % of the smart contract's value?)

amelius 8y ago
> Independent third party mediator that can contact both parties to figure out what happened (perhaps incentivized with a % of the smart contract's value?) Yes, I certainly see that as an option. And perhaps a system like this needs more types of "special actors", e.g. for supporting alternative payment methods.
- insickness 8y ago
  Great idea. And those independent thirdy-party mediators could even offer other services, like reviews. And you could pay through them. They could even have their own website. They could call it Amazon or something.
jrruethe 8y ago
There is a concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, where both the buyer and seller put 1.5x the value into a special 2-of-2 multisig address (I'm using Bitcoin as an example). Then, two transactions are created (but not yet signed); 1 that pays the seller their share and returns the remaining deposit to the buyer, and one that is the other way around (refund). When the item is shipped / received, and everything is good, both parties sign the transaction to unlock the funds. If either side attempts to scam the other, they are out 1.5x the price of the object. It becomes both party's interest to ensure that conflicts can be resolved so the deposits can be unlocked. In other words, it is escrow without the 3rd party. There is more information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/215yn2/mad_ransom_scheme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/215yn2/mad_ransom_...

amelius 8y ago

> Independent third party mediator that can contact both parties to figure out what happened (perhaps incentivized with a % of the smart contract's value?) Yes, I certainly see that as an option. And perhaps a system like this needs more types of "special actors", e.g. for supporting alternative payment methods.

insickness 8y ago
Great idea. And those independent thirdy-party mediators could even offer other services, like reviews. And you could pay through them. They could even have their own website. They could call it Amazon or something.

jrruethe 8y ago

There is a concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, where both the buyer and seller put 1.5x the value into a special 2-of-2 multisig address (I'm using Bitcoin as an example). Then, two transactions are created (but not yet signed); 1 that pays the seller their share and returns the remaining deposit to the buyer, and one that is the other way around (refund). When the item is shipped / received, and everything is good, both parties sign the transaction to unlock the funds. If either side attempts to scam the other, they are out 1.5x the price of the object. It becomes both party's interest to ensure that conflicts can be resolved so the deposits can be unlocked. In other words, it is escrow without the 3rd party. There is more information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/215yn2/mad_ransom_scheme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/215yn2/mad_ransom_...