Safe transactions between businesses or individuals.
Smart contracts provide decentralized escrow and protect both parties from fraud.
In case of a dispute, an arbiter resolves it.
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Get your stablecoins Smart contracts work only with crypto. Convert your fiat to stablecoins, such as USDC, on any cryptocurrency exchange, and transfer them to your Obyte wallet.
Trust strangers
Yes, trust even strangers, because you are protected
If you are a small business or an individual, you are normally cautious about dealing with companies or people you don't know. It can happen that you pay and they don't deliver, or you deliver and they don't pay, and the risks are especially high for cross-border deals. Legal protections exist but they are slow, cumbersome, and expensive. They really work only for the big guys.
Smart contracts are the solution. They provide a decentralized escrow where the funds are locked by the buyer for the full duration of the contract, and the buyer releases the funds to the seller only once they have received what they had paid for. If a dispute arises, the parties can invoke an arbriter who will study the evidence — like a judge — and release the funds to the winning party.
For small/medium businesses and P2P trade
Decentralized escrow is meant primarily for cross-border trade between small/medium businesses but it also works for domestic trade or trading high-value items between individuals, such as domain names, vehicles, real estate, art, collectibles, game assets, freelance work, etc.
Here is a high level view of actors in the ecosystem:
Buyer of goods / services
Arbiter (dispute resolution)
Smart contracts (programmable agreements) + stablecoins
Obyte decentralized DLT platform
Seller of goods / services
Arbiter (dispute resolution)
Smart contracts (programmable agreements) + stablecoins
Buyer of goods / services
Seller of goods / services
Obyte decentralized DLT platform
How to start using decentralized escrow
Two counterparties download Obyte wallet and pair with each other.
They agree on contract terms and digitally sign the contract. They also agree who will be their arbiter in case of a dispute.
Buyer of goods or services locks funds on a smart contract address backing the contract.
Success story: both parties are satisfied with the outcome, the buyer releases the funds locked on the contract to the seller.
In case of a dispute, either side can invoke the arbiter to resolve the dispute.
After studying the evidence, the arbiter publicly posts their decision thus resolving the dispute.
The winner side claims the funds from the contract.
See more detailed description of the workflow in the user guide.
Perfect privacy
When you make a contract, only you and your conterpart know its content. Even the ArbStore doesn't know what your contract is about. The contract text is exchanged between you and your counterpart using Obyte's end-to-end encrypted messaging (which has been around since 2016).
If your contract completes successfully, nobody else learns its content (unless you or your counterpart decide to disclose it).
If a dispute arises, the arbiter gets the unencrypted text of the contract from the claimant in order to be able to resolve the dispute. The arbiter is bound by their own privacy terms which you can inquire before choosing the arbiter.
Only if the losing party decides to appeal the arbiter's decision, only in this case will they disclose the contract text to the ArbStore. The ArbStore will never share it with any third parties unless required by law.
Decentralized custody
Neither the ArbStore nor the arbiters custody the funds. The funds are escrowed by a smart contract deployed on a decentralized Obyte network, and no third party can touch them, even the ArbStore.
Truly global and unstoppable, no borders, no middlemen
Since the ArbStore works on top of a truly permissionless cryptocurrency platform, nobody can ever stop, block, restrict, or intervene with your transactions. There are no intermediaries like banks, SWIFT, or credit card systems. Even the ArbStore itself is not an intermediary and can't intervene with your business.
How much?
ArbStore takes a 0.75% cut from every contract it facilitates.
If a dispute arises, an arbitration fee has to be paid in addition. Different arbiters charge different fees but they typically range from 2% to 5%. See the list of arbiters and their fees. You select the arbiter before signing the contract and know their fees in advance. Arbitration costs are borne by the claimant in the current version. In a future version, the losing party will bear the arbitration costs.
If you come from fiat, there are also conversion costs for getting into crypto and back to fiat. They vary widely depending on payment method. Bank transfers through SEPA or SWIFT usually cost between $5 and $50 while credit card payments are usually in 2%-4% range. If you make many contracts in a row, you don't have to use fiat/crypto conversions too often and can save costs.