

Show HN: Meklebar — Bitcoin escrow transaction helper - goshakkk
http://goshakkk.name/meklebar/

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VMG
I'm guessing this has some interesting legal implications. This specific
incarnation might not survive.

I like it!

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goshakkk
> This specific incarnation might not survive.

Actually, I am all for wallets implementing similar functionality and making
the overall experience better. It's just that they are all really, really slow
to do this. But escrow transactions are useful and the purpose of the app is
just to allow you to create / redeem those.

Besides that, I plan to add some URL scheme where for example you create a
payment request and send the link, and the buyer just pastes their private key
and pays. (On a marketplace where the system generates the payment request and
present the buyer with the link, for example.)

It's just that bitcoin:// URLs don't allow you to do things like this, and not
every wallet supports URL scheme regardless.

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yebyen
> and the buyer just pastes their private key and pays

I thought your link was cool, but I'm a little scared that this is your stated
intention. Are you serious? Doesn't that give you, the middleman, access to
all of their funds (and not just the amount they needed to use to pay the
invoice?)

~~~
yebyen
The more I think about it, the more I think it seems like a well-reasoned and
wise approach.

We probably ought to decouple "the wallet" from "the identity" as much as
possible, and users handing over wallet keys to their favorite Trusted Entity
to Facilitate Payment is a step in the right direction. If you want to keep
funds separate, you will need a separate wallet and to get comfortable making
payments from one wallet into another. Accounts in the same wallet, derived
from the same private keys, are not sufficient.

One of the problems I consider in building a service like this is: how do you
safely scale your fee schedule to match the level of funds your users trusted
you to keep securely and escrow?

Do you charge a flat fee to list an advertisement on your forum, where your
escrow services are included with the base price?

Do you take a percent fee on each transaction, and if so, how do you enforce
it given that you're using three-party escrow such as this? If you're doing it
right, they can literally complete the transaction without your help and
perhaps should only feel compelled to pay you while you're actively involved
in resolving disputes.

Maybe that's the right approach, it incentivizes users to police themselves
and to do business with more trusted partners, to avoid paying fees, but you
could wind up making very little compared to the volume of transactions that
occurred between users of your advertising space. (Pro: the costs associated
with fraud and managing escrow are very low.)

You could also charge a monthly membership fee and restrict access to the
advertising space to only paid members with current accounts? They would get
your escrow service for free (included in the price). That seems like the best
option, but you have to deal with "critical mass" and network effects
problems, there is little incentive to pay to advertise on a forum with no
users.

It would also be easy to overshoot your target transaction fee percentage, or
undervalue your time by charging too small of a fee when in reality attempts
to perpetrate a fraud on even private internet forums are very common and very
time consuming to investigate.

This may be slightly more naïve analysis than I thought, and reaching for a
larger service than what you've actually provided, but it's more thought out
than my first reply.

