⚖️ Escrow System Guide

Placing an order sends your cryptocurrency payment into a market-controlled escrow wallet, not directly to the vendor. The vendor sees that the order exists and that payment landed, but they can't withdraw it — the funds only move to them once you finalize, or once the auto-finalize timer runs out. That single design choice is what makes most darknet market transactions work at all between two parties who have no legal recourse against each other and no real names to go on: the market itself is the only party both sides are forced to trust, and escrow is the mechanism that trust runs through. It's not protection against the market itself disappearing with escrow balances — that risk is separate, and it's why market exit history matters as much as any single vendor's reputation.

The auto-finalize timer starts the moment a vendor marks an order shipped — commonly around 14 days for domestic orders and 21 for international, though the exact window is set per-listing, so check it before you assume. Let that timer run out without manually finalizing or opening a dispute, and the market releases payment to the vendor on your behalf, whether or not the package actually showed up. This is where "I'll deal with it later" quietly becomes "I have no recourse" — a delayed package you meant to follow up on can slide past the deadline while you're waiting for tracking to update. If a delay looks likely for any reason, message the vendor and open a dispute before the clock runs out, not after; a dispute opened one day early costs nothing, one opened one day late can cost the entire order.

Open a dispute the moment something's actually wrong — no arrival, visible damage, or a product that doesn't match the listing — and do it before the auto-finalize deadline, since a dispute opened after funds release has nothing left to hold. A market moderator gets assigned to review both sides, and the evidence you bring matters more than how the dispute reads emotionally: screenshots of the in-market conversation, photos of what actually arrived, and a plain factual timeline of what happened and when. Moderators issue a binding call — full refund, partial refund, or release to the vendor — based on what's documented, not on which side argues harder. This is also the practical case for keeping every conversation inside the market's own messaging system rather than an outside app: it's the only channel that creates a record a moderator can actually see. The full dispute resolution guide covers how to build a case that holds up.