Hi Community,
We’re excited to introduce the Escrow Protocol — the core of a modular, composable Agentic DeCom (Decentralized Commerce) ecosystem that we are building step by step.
The Escrow Protocol is the foundational component and trust layer of the DeCom ecosystem, empowering humans but also AI agents to trade and transfer funds securely and trustlessly. It builds trust across the digital and physical world and is designed for real-world users (retail and institutional) such as exporters, importers, and freelancers.
We are now opening the doors to the community and are looking for:
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Members who want to support and share our vision
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Partners who can help us drive adoption and find early users
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Developers who are excited to build on top of our protocol and compose new agentic, DeCom-driven applications such as eCommerce platforms, selling agents, freelance platforms and more.
Below, we will share more details about the current status of the project, the ecosystem we are creating, and how you can get involved. We encourage everyone to explore, give feedback, and reach out — we’d love to collaborate.
Use Case 1: International Trade
The MVP will be released in January 2026 and focuses on solving trust issues in export–import transactions. The protocol already supports all core features required to run secure trade transactions end to end, including:
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defining customized escrow terms,
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inviting and managing multiple counterparties,
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uploading and signing sensitive documents protected through VetKeys encrypted storage,
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real-time, event-driven notifications for every contract step,
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secure funding of the escrow, and
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two release mechanisms for payout once delivery is verified.
This enables exporters and importers to transact safely without relying on expensive intermediaries.
Use Case 2: Freelancing & Services
Freelancers and project owners can already use the Escrow Protocol today to ensure secure payment for services. However, in 2026, we will enhance this use case further by introducing native milestone payments, enabling more detailed project structures, phased delivery, and improved protection for both sides.
We especially want to encourage developers who are building or planning to build freelancing platforms, marketplaces, or agent-driven service platforms to reach out. The Escrow Protocol can serve as the trusted payment layer for your application, and we are happy to collaborate, support integrations, and shape the ecosystem together.
Advantages of Web3 Escrows Over Traditional Escrows
Traditional escrow services are slow, expensive, and heavily dependent on intermediaries. Funds are held by third-party custodians who may delay payouts, mismanage assets, or introduce unnecessary counterparty risk. SMEs often cannot access affordable escrow solutions at all, and cross-border processes involve long settlement times, manual work, and high operational costs. This makes today’s escrow landscape inefficient, costly, and opaque.
Web3 escrows solve these problems by replacing intermediaries with trustless, automated smart contracts. The result is safer, faster, and globally accessible escrow infrastructure that dramatically reduces costs and risks.
Key Advantages of Web3 Escrows
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Non-Custodial Funds: No intermediary holds user assets — smart contracts securely manage everything, eliminating counterparty risk.
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Enhanced Security: Cryptographic guarantees and decentralized execution provide robust protection against fraud and operational failure.
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Cost Reduction: Automation removes middlemen and manual processes, lowering operational and transaction costs.
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Automated & Programmable: Smart contracts trigger payouts based on verifiable conditions, minimizing errors and delays.
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On-Chain Auditability: All actions and state changes remain fully traceable, increasing transparency and trust.
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Privacy-Preserving Document & Data Flows (VetKeys): Sensitive documents remain encrypted end-to-end, accessible only to authorized parties.
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Agent-Ready: Works seamlessly for humans, AI agents, and dApps — ideal for autonomous commerce.
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Global, Permissionless Access: Anyone with internet access can use the protocol, expanding access to SMEs and freelancers worldwide.
Internet Computer
The Internet Computer (ICP) enables the Escrow Protocol to deliver a Web2-smooth experience with Web3 trust guarantees. Key ICP features make a fully decentralized, cross-chain escrow possible:
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Internet Identity – Passwordless, Secure Authentication: Users authenticate with passkeys (biometrics or hardware keys) via II. No passwords, no seed phrases—just secure WebAuthn-based identity suitable for non-crypto users and enterprises.
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Reverse Gas Model – Seamless Web2 UX: Users never need ICP tokens to interact with the escrow. Canisters cover computation costs, allowing exporters, importers, and freelancers to onboard instantly with a frictionless Web2-style flow.
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VetKeys – Privacy-Preserving Data & Document Flows: Document uploads (contracts, invoices, shipping docs) are encrypted user-side using keys derived via VetKeys. Sensitive business information never leaves the user’s device unencrypted, ensuring compliance-ready confidentiality for SMEs.
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Event-Driven Notifications via HTTP Outcalls: The protocol uses HTTP Outcalls to trigger automated reminders, counterpart invitations, funding alerts, and next-step prompts. This replaces manual follow-ups and mirrors modern workflow automation—without running centralized servers.
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Full-Stack On-Chain Deployment: Frontend and backend both run inside canisters, ensuring a fully decentralized, censorship-resistant experience. This allows humans, AI agents, and dApps to interact with the protocol reliably and globally.
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Chain Fusion and Threshold ECDSA: Through Chain Fusion, the escrow canister can interact with Ethereum without bridges or external relayers, allowing it to fetch on-chain state and execute payouts directly on the EVM. Combined with threshold ECDSA, the canister controls its own Ethereum address and signs transactions programmatically, enabling decentralized, non-custodial fund releases.
The technical foundation of the Escrow Protocol is led by Behrad @b3hr4d, a highly experienced blockchain engineer with 13+ years in full-stack development, 3+ years of deep Ethereum ecosystem experience, and 3+ years specializing in the Internet Computer (ICP).
He has architected and shipped multiple production-grade ICP systems — including B3Wallet, B3Forge, and @ic-reactor — and has earned top placements in several major DFINITY-backed hackathons and competitions.
His expertise spans threshold ECDSA, ChainFusion, VetKeys, secure canister orchestration, and security-critical backend design. This combination of Ethereum and ICP specialization ensures that the Escrow Protocol is built on a robust, scalable, and security-oriented engineering foundation while fully leveraging the unique capabilities of the Internet Computer.
Go-Live Readiness, Market Entry & Post-Grant Roadmap
Due to a DFINITY grant, we have successfully implemented VetKeys for privacy-preserving data and document flows, event-driven real-time notifications, and gas-less transactions, enabling the Escrow Protocol to operate securely and production-ready. With these foundations in place, December 2025 is dedicated to final testing, and mainnet deployment is scheduled for January 2026.
Our go-to-market strategy begins with an invite-only rollout for up to 25 institutional users—primarily SMEs and corporates. Institutional onboarding cycles are naturally longer, but this controlled launch allows us to collect UX insights, validate real transaction flows, improve usability, and refine the protocol before scaling. We currently have six LOIs from exporters and importers who will onboard along with their trade counterparts. Initial usage will focus on high-frequency, low-volume agricultural transactions, ideal for early-stage learning. In parallel, we are already in discussions with several multipliers - including e-commerce platforms, freelance marketplaces, and even a bank exploring a white-label escrow solution. These partnerships can significantly accelerate adoption once the protocol is live.
Furthermore, we are engaging with multiple on-ramp providers to support the higher transaction volumes requested by early adopters. We are also advancing work on credentials, including both standard and qualified credentials, as certain jurisdictions require Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES) for high-value escrows. To address this, we are reviewing the Internet Computer’s credential setup and are in ongoing conversations with several KYC/KYB providers, from whom we aim to receive verifiable credentials issued directly by the providers themselves. We warmly invite developers and ecosystem contributors with experience in decentralized identity and credentials to collaborate with us on this effort, as we believe it will benefit many IC projects.
Financially, we are onboarding an angel investor to secure a 6–8 month runway, while preparing for a Seed funding round once our real-world proof of concept is demonstrated through live transactions.
We have also defined a long-term AI strategy. We are building a set of specialized AI agents within our Agentic DeCom ecosystem. These agents are designed to autonomously communicate and cooperate not only with each other but also with external buyer and seller agents, which we believe will shape the future of Commerce. Our goal is to ensure that the escrow layer becomes the trusted transaction and settlement foundation for the emerging agent-driven economy.
Progression Toward Full Decentralization
From day one, we follow a clear, step-by-step path toward establishing the Escrow Protocol as a fully decentralized DeFi protocol. Every architectural and organizational decision has been aligned with this aim.
We are progressively decentralizing across the key layers of a Web3 protocol:
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Settlement Layer
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Asset Layer
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Protocol Layer
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Application Layer
Across these layers, we integrate decentralization elements that continually increase the protocol’s decentralization, such as:
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running the protocol on the Internet Computer,
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advancing toward community-driven, decentralized governance,
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enforcing a non-custodial architecture,
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relying on autonomous and immutable smart contracts,
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preparing a fully decentralized frontend,
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ensuring permissionless access,
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and enabling automated, trustless execution.
To support this long-term evolution, we have created a clear organizational structure:
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DeTrust Labs Ltd (Development Company, established):
responsible for research, engineering, and protocol development. -
Frontend Operating Company (in incorporation):
responsible for operating and hosting the user interface. -
DAO & Token Issuance Entities (future):
At a later stage, all governance will be handed over to a DAO, and a utility token with governance rights will be issued to empower decentralized, community-controlled decision-making.
This ensures that decentralization is not an afterthought, but a structured, incremental path integrated into every development milestone and architectural decision.
Economic Model
Our long-term monetization plan centers around issuing a utility token, which we believe is the most effective way to create an incentive layer that benefits the entire Agentic DeCom ecosystem. The token will ultimately support several revenue streams, including:
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Escrow deployment fees
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Referral fees from KYC/KYB providers, on-ramp partners, arbitration and insurance partners
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Qualified Credential Issuance Fees
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Data Service Fees
At this stage, we do not consider an SNS launch suitable, as current SNS token models do not align with the incentive mechanics required for real-world business processes. Additionally, the broader market still lacks sustainable tokenomics specifically designed for high-value, real-world use cases like international trade. Because of this, we expect token issuance to take place no earlier than 2028, after the ecosystem, regulation, and token model research have matured.
In the meantime, our focus is pure adoption and network effects. We intend to charge no fees in the early phase to onboard as many exporters, importers, freelancers, and multipliers such as eCommerce platforms, Freelance platforms and other institutions as possible. This approach, however, must be balanced with external funding to support operations until the protocol reaches meaningful scale.
Ecosystem Integrations
We strongly believe that founders and teams should focus on what they do best — building the products and services where they have the deepest expertise. The Escrow Protocol is designed to be the trust and settlement backbone for a wide range of applications, enabling others in the ecosystem to innovate freely without reinventing critical components like payments or verification.
Because of this, the escrow layer serves as a foundation stone for powerful horizontal and vertical integrations. Many of these areas are not our main focus — and that is by design. Instead, we openly invite developers, founders, and teams who are already building in these areas (or planning to) to integrate with us or build on top of the protocol.
Feel free to reach out anytime to discuss partnerships, integrations, or joint development opportunities.
We look forward to building a stronger, more interconnected ecosystem together.
Connect With Us
If you want to integrate, collaborate, or follow our progress, you can reach us here:
Website: https://escrow-protocol.com
Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/EscrowProtocol_
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-bsvJCJ6yoxY4zyUYSlO3A
Email: contact@escrow-protocol.com
We’re always open to conversations, partnerships, and integrations.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere thanks to Moritz @cryptoschindler, Tiago @tiago89, Kepler@Kepler, Marco @marc0olo, Dieter @dieter.sommer, Dominic @domwoe, Stefan @StefanBerger-DFINIT1 and Radu @radu for your support, insights, encouragement, and open-door mindset throughout our development journey.
Your guidance, technical expertise, and the infrastructure provided by the DFINITY Foundation have played an essential role in enabling the Escrow Protocol to become what it is today.
We deeply appreciate the trust the Foundation has placed in us through the grant program, and we remain committed to contributing meaningfully to the Internet Computer ecosystem.
Looking forward to next milestones, keep us updated 