Request for Comments: automated escrow service run by the mods

Poll question

Would you support (agree with) this proposal as detailed below?

The proposal

We propose an automated Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum escrow service run by the moderators of this sub. The service would work thusly:

1. Any user ("sender") can start an escrow transaction by sending a private message to a bot with the details of the transaction.
2. The bot would provide a deposit address to send funds to.
3. As soon as payment is detected, the bot will send a message to the other party ("recipient") informing them of the funded escrow.
4. As soon as the escrow is funded, the recipient shall provide the goods or services agreed thereto.
5. When the transaction is complete to the sender's satisfaction, they may PM the bot to release the funds to the recipient, who shall provide a cryptocurrency address with which to receive the funds.
6. In the case any issues arise, either party may report the case to the moderators, who shall make a ruling concerning the status of the funds, to their best judgement based on the provided evidence. At any time, the recipient may release the funds back to the sender.

We plan to add more cryptocurrency assets if possible, but we do not plan to support escrows of fiat currency for legal reasons.

Fees

Network fees shall be paid by the sender when funding the escrow. When the funds are released, network fees will be deducted from the amount sent to the recipient. We plan to allow the recipient to specify a desired network fee.

We, the moderators, plan to charge a nominal 50¢ per transaction escrow fee to cover the costs of running the service. In the event that actual operation costs incurred are less than the sum collected in escrow fees, the fee will be lowered. We do not intend for this to a for-profit endeavour.

Availability and security

This project is intended as a public service to all Reddit trading communities and is available to all users without restriction, although if one party is a USL-listed scammer, we intend to alert the other party of this fact.

The source code of the bot shall be open-source and licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3. The bot will be hosted on a rented server. The actual moderator who rents the server shall provide their full identity to the rest of the moderation team to increase accountability.

In order to reduce the potential risks in sharing private keys or rogue moderators stealing funds, only the moderator who rents the server (and thus has provided their full identity) shall have access to the private keys.

Poll question

Would you support (agree with) this proposal as detailed above?

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