Why Escrows Matter

Stablecoins move trillions. Stellar and Soroban give us the speed and cost efficiency. But real-world payments don’t run on speed alone — they run on trust.

Escrow is the missing layer between “I sent the money” and “I got what I paid for.”

Why Trustless Work?

• Escrows are a great way to solve for trust.

  Escrows are neutral way to hold funds while specific conditions are met. Most people tend to think about Real Estate when I mention escrows, and they are right! we DO use escrows for Real Estate and high value transactions!

Simple representation of a Real Estate Escrow.

But Escrows are useful for so many things, for example, marketplaces like Upwork and Ebay use them:

Escrows on digital marketplaces.

Ebay and Upwork can afford to build their own escrow infrastructure. Well, sort of... Ebay actually uses Escrow.com, a huge legacy escrow company that takes between (3% - 8%) , Upwork, built Upwork Escrow inc. But thats not the reality of most businesses...

Platforms that could greatly benefit from the use of escrows don't use them because of the technical complexity and cost of building an escrow infrastructure.

• Escrows with Fiat are next to impossible to build (Legacy escrows). Escrows are more commonly found on high value transactions, like Real Estate, Merge and Aquisitions, and cross border trade mainly because they are costly and sloe. Fiat requires bank accounts or a complex settlement system to achieve this functionality. I've met people who toook a year to build their escrow infrastrucute, A YEAR!

• Blockchain obviously solves this, but complexity to built it is still high. Blockchain and web3 are the perfect solution for this, but we can't expect for every marketplace out there to have a Smart Contract engineer. Getting to experiment, test and scale with this technology is resource intensive and has a steep learning curve.

🧩 What Escrow Solves

• ❌ Chargebacks and fraud in marketplaces

• ❌ Late or withheld payments for freelancers

• ❌ Unclear fund control in grants, bounties, or pre-orders

• ❌ No dispute path in P2P or milestone deals

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✅ What Trustless Escrow Enables

• 💸 Payments are only released when work is approved

• 🔐 Funds are held in secure, neutral smart contracts

• 🤖 Approval flows can be signed off by users, platforms, or agents

• 🌍 Works globally with USDC and Stellar’s fast settlement

Next Steps

• Get Started: Quick Start Guide Begin integrating Trustless Work today.

• Learn More: About Trustless Work Explore our mission, vision, and journey so far.

• Contact Us: Support Need help? Reach out to our team for assistance.