Hm it clearly sounds interesting. But it is kind of funny how you are rewarding those people who actually don't use the refund system right? Since they are more trustable contributors. I think the refund system might be quite annoying for ICOs. I mean they HAVE TO wait 30 days after the contribution to make sure they can count on that contribution. A refund system would be great to somehow protect users against hackers like the phishing hack on Myetherwallet few months ago. But anything that can protect the users is good. I will follow this.
Easy to understand use cases
1. Hacker protection
2. Human error protection
Complex in understanding use cases
1. ICO
2. Freelancer payments
So let's focus on complex in understanding
ICO
It is true, from the first look it is quite annoying but when people send money to ICO which is shut down all activities after 1 month is annoying too. And there is no way to force them to continue. It means the regulation is required here.
The regulation can be delegated to someone but we know what happens after - we create a centralized point of expertise (one step for next government)
So the solution is to change the protocol and let people play with trust levels.
Currently, the smart contract is a set of rules defined by a team
Should be, the sum of trust of all smart-contracts of all contributors.
But all these contributors still interact with smart-contract of the team.
So the team can give `award to trust` to people who set `0` refundable period and disallow to send higher refundable period for first transactions.
It helps to make the progress of the project and create a new trust lever for next contributors.
We do not remove 100 percent risks but reduce them.
Also, the team should not have any problem with that because they have to work. It does not work for cases when the team decide to withdraw money and disappear.
Freelancer payments
Each transaction needs gas
Each transaction stored in the blockchain
You want to hire a freelancer to make a design for you
You sent him 2 Non-Refundable ETH
You sent him 8 Refundable ETH which covers a working period
He has done his job
You refunded 8 Refundable ETH because you are a scammer
What we have finally
1. The evidence of the refunded transaction
2. 2 ETH insurance (could be configured during discussion)
If you receive the transaction from anonymous address then the evidence will not help but if the client binds the address with his website, the company then he binds this transaction with his reputation.
So freelancer should ask to bind the address with company address for better insurance.