Quote from: Serge V. on March 09, 2016, 03:38:44 PM

Quote from: SebastianJu on March 09, 2016, 10:39:28 AM

I wonder if you are new on here or if your english is only that bad that you miswrote what you meant. I doubt that you really believe that a scammer can be motivated to be honest to his trading partner.

Without escrows the situation on bitcointalk would be way way worse. You never notice it because so many scams are stopped in the beginning only because an escrow is mentioned, then another big bunch when the escrow gets involved and alot of deals end before the escrow got released because before that doubts appear or a clear accusation comes into.

Well, I think you miswrote... or you somehow managed to never get scammed.

I am not miswrote. There are a lot of examples here proved that a third party always will be the weak link in any deal. And some of you already can agree with it.

Serge, it's a little bit funny that you quoted a sentence that he did not wrote against third party escrows but against multisignature escrowing. Though that is the solution you come up with.

Quote from: Serge V. on March 09, 2016, 03:38:44 PM

Quote from: OgNasty on November 22, 2015, 08:33:22 PM

The more parties you involve in a transation, the more points of failure there are.

I'm always wonder how somebody still use the third party escrow in our community when the bitcoin protocol already gives more higher level of security than can give any trusted escrow. Very sad, that people can not understand, that more mature escrow service and longer history can not protect them from human error, hacking/physical compromising, from disappearing of the agent or the scam from his side...

Here is an example of the escrow scheme that motivates scammer to be honest to his trading partner:
1. The escrow agent creates a transaction, according to which the buyer collateral & the buyer payment for goods (2x) + the seller collateral (1x) will be sent to the created from their public keys MultiSig address.
2. The buyer and the seller checks and sign the transaction, the transaction is broadcasted to the network.
3. After the transaction is confirmed, the seller sends the goods to the buyer.
4. The buyer receives the goods and informs the escrow agent.
5. The escrow agent creates the transaction, according to which the seller will receive the seller collateral & the buyer payment for goods (2x) and the buyer will receive the buyer collateral (1x).
6. The seller and the buyer checks and sign the transaction, the transaction is broadcasted to the network.

Actually, this scheme will encourage both sides to be honest, and if something happens with the parcel to conduct a thorough investigation and find the consensus.

Yes, an escrow is a point of failure but the same is true for your scenario. You only need one of these scammy escrows or a hacked escrow account and you already have zero security from that 2of3 multisig that you described. The scammer would initiate a trade with an altaccount, deal as the escrow and screw the other trading partner because the scammer already holds 2 of the keys to release the coins to himself.

I did not have seen yet a fully safe scenario there too. You could involve more than one escrows though that would mean more time it takes, more work and maybe higher fees. For more security though.

Still an escrow is needed for negotiating while problems. With 2 of 2 you run into the risk that one of your trading partners claim you did send something wrong or that he threatens you to not release the coins until you agree to pay half of the price back.

It's often suggested but it is only a partly solution for some problems and many remain unsolved or other attack vectors are there.