This is the developer documentation for Trustless Work.
Trustless Work is Escrow-as-a-Service (EaaS) for stablecoin escrow. Build non-custodial flows with milestones, approvals, and disputes. Contracts run on Stellar (Soroban). Your app drives them via API or SDK.
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What you can build
Hold funds in escrow using non-custodial smart contracts.
Add programmable release logic to your app or marketplace.
Support milestones, approvals, partial releases, and disputes.
Common escrow use cases
Marketplace escrow for e-commerce and services.
Freelance and contract escrow with milestone payouts.
Security deposits for rentals and reservations.
Crowdfunding and pre-orders with conditional payouts.
Try it in minutes
Configure roles and permissions per signer.
Launch faster without writing escrow contracts from scratch.
Trustless Work docs are written for humans and for machines.
Humans get clarity, precision, and examples. Agents get structure, consistency, and predictable semantics.
Why this matters
The next generation of builders won’t just code. They’ll prompt, automate, and delegate work to agents.
An AI-ready doc set lets you:
Export content for training and internal copilots.
Feed pages into your LLM memory or RAG pipeline.
Let agents reason through flows and generate SDK/API calls.
Goal: make the documentation itself a building block for automation.
Export formats
You can export any section of the docs as PDF or Markdown.
PDF for onboarding manuals and reference packs.
Markdown (.md) for ingestion and context injection.
Prompt blocks for pasting into GPT, Cursor, or v0.dev.
Check the SDK pages for prompt-first workflows that generate and debug escrow flows.
Ask the docs (search)
Search is optimized for natural language. Use intent-focused prompts, not just keywords.
Example prompts:
Search rewrites your question into a structured query and returns the best snippets.
fund a multi-release escrow with testnet USDC
create an SDK snippet to mark milestone as done
explain the difference between approver and release signer
Who Should Use This
Trustless Work is built for developers, platforms, and agents who want more control and automation over when funds are released.
Platforms using stablecoins
Examples:
Gig and freelance platforms (milestone payouts)
B2B tools using USDC for global settlement
Rental and booking platforms (security deposits)
Why it fits:
Reduce fraud
Automate releases and disbursements
Lower operational cost
Builders and product teams
Examples:
Solo devs or small teams prototyping dApps
DAO tooling, donation platforms, on-chain marketplaces
Why it fits:
Plug-and-play escrow logic
Start on testnet, then go live without re-architecting
Enterprise use
Examples:
Platforms with escrow-like flows but no escrow infrastructure
Teams replacing costly custodial services with on-chain escrow
Escrow is a neutral way to hold funds until conditions are met. It’s the simplest primitive for “trust, but verify”.
Escrow is the trust layer
Most people first think of real estate. That’s correct. Escrow is common in high-value transactions.
Simple representation of a Real Estate Escrow.
Escrow also shows up in marketplaces (Upwork, eBay, etc.).
Escrows on digital marketplaces.
Big platforms can afford escrow infrastructure. Many others can’t.
eBay leans on legacy providers (often 3%–8% fees). Upwork invested heavily in escrow operations.
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.
Why legacy escrow is hard
Fiat escrow is expensive and slow. It typically requires bank rails and settlement workflows.
It’s operationally heavy. Real estate, M&A, and cross-border trade use escrow because they can justify the overhead.
Some teams spend months to a year building escrow infrastructure.
Why smart-contract escrow wins (but still hurts to build)
Blockchain makes escrow programmable and auditable. But building production-grade contracts and flows still takes specialized time. Most teams don’t want to hire a full smart contract team for v1.
What escrow solves
Chargebacks and fraud in marketplaces
Late or withheld payments for freelancers
Unclear fund control in grants, bounties, or pre-orders
What Trustless Escrow enables
Payments release only when work is approved.
Funds sit in secure, neutral smart contracts.
Approval flows can be signed by users, platforms, or agents.
