How escrow protects both sides of a channel sale

A channel sale is an awkward transaction. The buyer is asked to send a large sum to somebody they have never met; the seller is asked to hand over an asset that took years to build, on the promise of payment. Whoever moves first carries all of the risk.

Escrow removes the question of who moves first by making the answer "neither".

The order things happen in

1. The buyer and seller agree a price. The amount and the service fee are snapshotted at that moment. If the seller edits the listing afterwards, the agreed price does not move.
2. The buyer pays into escrow. The money leaves the buyer, and it does not reach the seller. It sits with InfuMarket against a deal reference.
3. The seller starts the transfer. Channel ownership, the linked email, the payout account — every step of the handover is recorded against the deal, so nobody has to remember what was done on which day.
4. The buyer confirms. Not "the seller says it is done" — the buyer confirms they have the channel.
5. The money is released. Only then, and only after that confirmation.

At no point is one party holding both the asset and the money.

What happens when it goes wrong

If the seller does not transfer within the agreed window, the money goes back to the buyer in full, service fee included. If the buyer disappears after payment but before the transfer starts, the amount is refunded and the fee is retained. If the two of them disagree about whether the handover actually happened, the deal goes to a dispute and a human being reads the record of what each side did.

That record is the quiet part of why this works. Every state change writes an event and a notification, so a dispute is decided on a timeline rather than on two conflicting memories.

Payments are confirmed by hand, for now

In this release, incoming payments are confirmed by our team rather than by a gateway — usually within one business day. That is slower than an automatic capture, and it is deliberate while the volume is small enough for a person to look at every one. You will see the exact status of yours at every step, and the escrow guarantees above are identical either way.