Escrow means my money is safe
Escrow means I cannot lose money
What it genuinely does
The funding key is split across buyer, vendor and platform, and funds move when two of the three sign. In normal completion the buyer and vendor sign and the platform key never appears, which means an ordinary order does not depend on the platform being available or honest. In a dispute the panel signs alongside whichever side it rules for, so the third key is a tiebreaker rather than a veto and cannot move anything alone.
The protective property is structural rather than a promise. A platform trying to disappear with escrowed funds needs a majority of vendors to actively sign away their own money. That is a genuinely strong guarantee and it deserves to be stated clearly before the qualifications.
What it does not cover
| Situation | Covered? |
|---|---|
| The platform vanishing with escrowed funds | Yes. This is the one it was built for and it works. |
| A vendor who does not ship | No. That is a dispute, decided on evidence, and the outcome depends on what you submitted. |
| Your own account compromised | No. An attacker signs as you. Escrow assumes your key is yours and cannot establish it. |
| Anything sent outside escrow | No. No mechanism exists. This is the genuinely unrecoverable case. |
| A balance parked on the site | No. Escrow governs committed orders. Funds sitting there are not committed to anything. |
| What you actually receive | No. Escrow decides when money moves and has no opinion on goods. |
The most common actual loss
Not an exit, not a dispute, not a scam. A balance sitting on the platform because somebody funded more than they intended to spend and left the rest there. That money is outside every protection on this page and exposed to everything that can happen to a platform, including things that are nobody's fault.
It is also entirely under your control, which makes it the most avoidable loss in this whole register and the most frequent one.
Single signature orders
Some vendors offer them and a small number of buyers accept, usually for a small discount or because the vendor asks. Accepting one gives up the structural protection described above in exchange for marginally simpler settlement, which is a poor trade from the buyer side. Worth knowing which arrangement you are agreeing to rather than assuming, because the interface does not always make it loud.