Nostr

Right now escrows over lightning (ala HODL invoices like robosats) are limited to about 24 hours and require a third party to resolve disputes.

Dispute resolution requires a third party to make a judgement for one or the other party, and in order to do so the funds need to be held in trust until two of three parties agree who should be paid. The problem with shipping products is this can take weeks or months.

I believe the de-facto resolution to this underlying need for third party conflict resolution was solved first by ebay with the reputation score. This is why nostr is a perfect platform for a marketplace, your social media reputation is tied to your financial reputation. Then your transaction history score becomes an asset you should want to protect and thereby everyone is motivated to be honest without the force of government.

There will always be cases where people get pissed off at one another because someone was late, got sick, thrown in jail, in a car accident, shipped the wrong thing or was dicking around with payment. You don't have protections like that on Craigslist either, so a marketplace based on reputation should be as good as a handshake agreement, and you should have the same level of trust established with your service providers that you chose to business with and are part of your splits.

Jack Spirko 2y ago

Keep in mind and I don't know the tech but this would be a cooperative escrow simple because refunds happen. It could honestly be an agreed upon amount, with one party able to send it. Something like 2x APRU (avg. sale).

Not sure what needs doing to make it work but again refunds happen. I do about 1/2% of total sales a year in refunds for various reasons. It isn't a lot but it is a thing.

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Discussion

Brunswick 2y ago

The concern you're raising has to do with needing to be able to perform a full refund even after payment had been split, is that right?

This is an interesting problem. It could be solved by some kind of 'joint account' between you and your split-payment beneficiaries, where you can draw from the funds in order to resolve returns.

For example, you do normal splits from your customer to you and your split-beneficiaries (lets call them your suppliers in business speak) and you all get paid immediately. But then later, your customer returns whatever it is they bought and you want to issue a refund. Rather than asking your suppliers for these small payments for the refund, you draw from the two-party joint account. You have a separate joint account between you and each supplier, and its a 'slush fund' explicitly for this purpose.

If you have some kind of argument with a supplier, they can drain this joint account without your agreement because that's the nature of a joint account, but since this is a business relationship its unlikely someone would violate your trust over such a small amount.

The joint accounts can be done with existing tech, for example with a simple LNDHUB wallet where you share the wallet URI with your supplier, and its up to the supplier to keep this funded at an agreed-upon amount. Its up to your supplier to keep this wallet topped off, and they would have access to the transaction list to see what you have been doing with it. This way you can distribute the 2xARPU between your suppliers, and their payment is contingent on them keeping it topped off when you notify them of an issued return (which could be automated). All of this could potentially be done automatically under lnbits extensions.