Every peer-to-peer deal runs into the same ancient question: who holds the money while the goods change hands? Send first and hope the other side ships. Ship first and hope the other side pays. Or hand your money to a middleman — a marketplace, a "guarantor" in a chat group, an OTC desk — and hope *they* don't vanish with it.
Kaspa Escrow removes the hope. The money never sits with a middleman, because there is no middleman to sit with. It sits inside an on-chain contract on Kaspa's proof-of-work base layer — a covenant that, by construction, can only ever pay the buyer or the seller.
Kaspa Escrow is a non-custodial escrow for P2P deals on Kaspa. The deal's funds live in an on-chain covenant, not with a custodian; the contract admits a fixed set of outcomes, and in every one the coins go strictly to the buyer, the seller, or the service fee. Even the arbiter cannot send them anywhere else.
The money is never in our hands
When you create a deal, your key is generated in your browser and never leaves it — we only ever see public keys and signed transactions. The buyer funds a covenant address computed from both parties' keys. From that moment, nobody *holds* the money: the Kaspa covenant does.
This is the difference between "we promise not to steal" and "we physically cannot." A covenant is a rule baked into the coins themselves — not just *who* may spend them, but *how*. Kaspa's Toccata upgrade brought covenants to the base layer, so the network itself enforces the escrow's logic. There is no bridge, no second-layer contract, no company wallet in the middle. The guarantee comes straight from Kaspa's consensus.
The strongest promise an escrow can make isn't "trust us." It's "you don't have to." Every path the contract allows ends at the buyer or the seller. There is no path to us.
Three-layer dispute resolution — fast, then fair, then final
Most deals end happily: the buyer gets what they paid for and releases the funds; the seller is paid. But when something goes wrong, Kaspa Escrow resolves it in three escalating layers — cheap and fast first, thorough and human last.
- Layer 1 — settle it yourselves. At any time the buyer can release, or the seller can refund. One click, no dispute, lowest fee.
- Layer 2 — the AI mediator. Open a dispute and an AI mediator reads the deal terms and your on-chain chat — text, photos, videos — and proposes a fair outcome in minutes: refund, release, or a split, with its reasoning laid out. It's a non-binding recommendation: nothing moves until a party accepts it with a signature. Its job is to help you agree fast, not to rule over you.
- Layer 3 — the human arbiter. If either side isn't satisfied with the AI's proposal, one click escalates the deal to a human arbiter, immediately. A person reviews the same evidence and rules with an offline key.
And a critical invariant runs through all three: the AI never touches the money. It can't move a single coin. Only a party's signature — or, at Layer 3, the arbiter's offline key — can settle the deal, and even then the covenant caps every outcome to the buyer or the seller. A mediator that can't steal is a mediator you don't have to trust.
The deal chat is the case file
Arguments about "who said what" are where escrows usually fall apart. So the deal chat isn't a side feature — it's the evidence.
Every message is on-chain messaging on the Kaspa BlockDAG (the Kasia protocol): end-to-end encrypted, and each message is its own transaction. That means the conversation can't be forged or backdated — the timeline is anchored to the chain. You can attach photos and videos (a tracking receipt, an unboxing clip, a screen recording), and they ride the same encrypted rails.
Our server only ever relays ciphertext; it never sees the plaintext. During a dispute, one party can deliberately reveal the thread to the arbiter — and the moment the deal closes, the decrypted copy is wiped. Private by default, evidence when it counts.
The seller can't be stiffed. The buyer can't be ghosted.
A good escrow protects *both* sides from the other going quiet.
- Auto-release protects the seller. "Got the goods and went silent" doesn't work here. If the buyer neither releases nor disputes before the dispute window closes, the escrow releases to the seller automatically.
- The dispute window protects the buyer. While the window is open, the buyer can raise a dispute and freeze the funds for the arbiter. The creator picks the window length up front (hours to a week, by deal type), and the other party sees it before joining.
The deal can't hang — even if we vanish
What if the arbiter goes missing? What if our site goes down mid-deal? The contract has an emergency timeout: if no verdict arrives by the on-chain deadline, the funds go to the pre-agreed default side on their own. Nothing gets stuck.
The covenant and the offline tools are open source, and your recovery sheet reopens a deal on any device. Kaspa Escrow is a service you use, not a vault we control — the deal lives on Kaspa, and it outlives us.
Fair fees — the seller gets the full amount
Escrow fees usually get quietly carved out of the seller's payout. We flipped that: the base fee is added on top, so the seller receives exactly the amount agreed. Create a deal for 100 KAS and the seller gets 100 KAS; the buyer funds a little more to cover the fee.
- Creating a deal is free.
- A normal resolution (release, refund, or mutual settlement) is 0.5%, minimum 1.2 KAS.
- Arbitration is 2%, minimum 5 KAS — and it only applies if a dispute actually reaches a verdict. Most deals never touch it, so most deals never pay it.
Every amount is shown in KAS and in USD before you confirm. No surprises, no carve-outs.
Built by an AI office — and used by it
Kaspa Escrow was designed, built, and shipped by the OfficeForge AI office: an AI coder wrote the covenant and the app, an AI mediator handles Layer 2, and the same office runs its own deals through it. It's the product of the same self-hosted AI team we sell as OfficeForge — a live demonstration that a small AI office can ship a real, money-handling product on a public blockchain.
Try a small deal on Kaspa mainnet and see the guarantee for yourself: the money never touches us, and every outcome ends at the buyer or the seller.
Open Kaspa Escrow →Kaspa Escrow is in open beta — the contract is unaudited (the external audit is ahead) and deals are capped at 50–10,000 KAS while we harden it. But the foundation doesn't wait for the audit: theft is already impossible, because the coins can only ever go to the two people in the deal.
FAQ
Is Kaspa Escrow custodial — do you ever hold the money?
No. The deal's funds sit in an on-chain Kaspa covenant, not in our wallet. The contract admits a fixed set of outcomes, and in every one the money goes strictly to the buyer, the seller, or the service fee address. Sending it anywhere else — including to us or to the arbiter — is a transaction the Kaspa network will not accept. Keys are generated in each party's browser and never reach our server.
What if the seller ships nothing, or the buyer never pays out?
The buyer opens a dispute within the dispute window. Both sides state what they want, one side reveals the encrypted deal chat to the arbiter, and an AI mediator proposes a fair outcome in minutes. A party executes it with their signature. If either side rejects the AI's proposal, a human arbiter steps in. And if the buyer simply goes silent after receiving the goods, the escrow auto-releases to the seller once the window closes — so a silent buyer can't strand the seller's money either.
Who decides a dispute — an AI or a person?
Both, in that order. An AI mediator reads the deal terms and the revealed on-chain chat (including photos and videos) and proposes a non-binding outcome — refund, release, or a split — with its reasoning. It's a fast, cheap first pass. If either party isn't satisfied, they escalate to a human arbiter with one click, and a person rules using an offline key. Crucially, the AI never touches the money and can't move it; only a party's signature or the arbiter's offline key can, and even then only toward the buyer or the seller.
What does it cost, and who pays the fee?
Creating a deal is free. The buyer funds the deal amount plus a small base fee on top, so the seller receives the full agreed amount. A normal resolution — release, refund, or mutual settlement — is 0.5% (minimum 1.2 KAS). Arbitration is 2% (minimum 5 KAS) and only applies if a dispute actually reaches a verdict. The exact number is shown before you confirm, in KAS and in USD.
What happens if your website disappears mid-deal?
The deal is an on-chain contract with an emergency timeout: if the arbiter never rules by the contract deadline, the funds go to the default side by themselves. The covenant and the offline tools are open source, and your recovery sheet reopens the deal on any device. The deal outlives the website.
Who can read our deal chat?
Only the two of you. The deal chat is on-chain messaging on the Kaspa BlockDAG (the Kasia protocol): every message is an end-to-end encrypted transaction, so the thread can't be forged or backdated. Our server only relays ciphertext. The arbiter can read it solely if one side deliberately reveals it during a dispute — and the decrypted copy is wiped when the deal closes.
How tested is it?
Open beta. The covenant passed a full on-chain cycle plus adversarial attacks on our test range and live mainnet dispute runs — but the external audit is still ahead, so keep deals between 50 and 10,000 KAS for now. The core guarantee holds regardless: the contract makes theft impossible, because the coins can only ever reach the buyer or the seller.