Whitepaper link:
https://www.localtrade.io/whitepaper.pdfOur escrow system was designed and developed by our founder "Lite
Speed". We provide a reliable and high-performance escrow system to all
our users. This ensures our users can start a trade safely and complete
trades without a doubt or worry of being scammed.
When a trade is started, your funds will be held by us in a secure account.
These funds will be taken away from your active balance. This makes it
possible to open multiple trades with the remaining balance with other
traders.
How is this different to centralized exchanges available today (like LocalBitcoins)? AFAIK any time you want to provide escrow functionality for fiat this can't be done on the blockchain, it has to be done through the regular financial system. Therefore this "secure account" will be a centralized place where users need to trust localtrade to keep their funds safe.
Could you explain any new innovations that localtrade provides here?
As mentioned, in the previous reply above users funds are stored off-site, removing the element of direct access to funds, we will use a queuing system to verify the funds balance and transactions making sure funds are not moved without your confirmation, either via email or two-step verification, as development heads further into the future we plan to implement more security layers such as retina scanning for mobile applications and touch id for releasing funds and withdrawals.