Escrow smart contracts for P2P deals: code instead of trust

Challenge

A P2P platform for deals between strangers relied on a human guarantor: slow, expensive, unscalable — and the guarantor themselves a point of trust and risk.

Solution

We replaced the guarantor with an escrow contract: the buyer locks funds in the contract, the seller sees the lock and delivers, and confirmation releases the payment automatically. A dispute freezes the deal and brings in an arbiter with strictly limited rights — refund or release, never access to funds. Before release: full test coverage, fuzzing and two independent audits, with all findings closed before mainnet.

Result

Only 0.4% of deals reach a dispute — arbitration economics stopped being the bottleneck. The guarantor fee stayed with the platform, and trust moved from people into verifiable code: the public audit reports double as marketing.