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I think this would just rely on the ransomers to have the ransom paid to the correct address, which would be tied to a smart contract that'd take care of divvyi

I think this would just rely on the ransomers to have the ransom paid to the correct address, which would be tied to a smart contract that'd take care of divvying up any money coming in and forwarding it to other addresses. If money comes in, the work was done, so distribute it, all automatic. Aside from bugs in the contract, or opsec concerns, the main risk (for the saboteur) would be the ransom folks directing the victim to pay some other address that wasn't part of the smart contract, so no money ever comes into it. Really, it's only marginally more reliable than just depending on them to pay you when they get paid.

postoak 5y ago
That is interesting, how would the employee trust that the criminal organization would indicate the correct address (that triggers the smart contract) to the hostage company?
- handrous 5y ago
  That's the part that makes it only marginally better than just counting on them to manually forward the money. The only advantage is you skip the part where they already have the money but have not yet betrayed you, and are looking at a huge figure already in their own account and maybe contemplating not sending any of that to you. They can still just have it sent to the wrong place to begin with. Since it'd be easy to fake fulfilled contracts (make sure you own all addresses the contract disburses to) completed contracts, even if publicly visible, aren't even very good for building a reputation for paying out. You might just be paying yourself at multiple addresses, to make it look like you reliably pay out rewards.