Topic: real ESCROW functions. How they work now and how they should be. (Read 419 times)

I totally agree with your views.Unfortunately many ICO promoters do not have even the initial funds to support their projects so they distribute tokens and get escrow release the funds.Institution or software house escrow is a better idea but I think their fees will be very high for no established institute or software house will take all the pain to hold the funds,release it in parts or process refund in case of failed ico without charging heavy fee.

You are right, only a few projects(Stratis&Lisk) use the escrow mode like you said, which releases partial fund after specific milestone has been done).

Most scam projects use poor escrows, best example is: Bittrex and breakout, breakout shit had 3 ico and scammed more than 700 BTC fund, their first ico was scam, but bittrex was still escrow for them, Bittrex only asks: normal blockchain, wallet and coin distribution,breakout finally released nothing on the roadmap and turned out to be a scam.

Another example: Opair scam and SebastianJu. Most people know this scam lied to escrow. Additionally, recent story of ASC team scammed 3 famous escrows(Lauda, yahoo and minerjones) by cheating a vague escrow term.

I see lot of ICOs with such called escrows but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrow

"An escrow is an account established by a broker for holding funds on behalf of the broker's principal or some other person until the consummation or termination of a transaction"

I just wonder why people tolerate in ICOs where main product is software tolerate a very simplified escrow which is escrow called but have little to do with escrow?
OK you get some Tokens or simplified coin before new one is developed, but this is not a consummation of transaction or agreement.

Right now the best escrow transaction example are holidays, where you pay to travel agency when you come back from holidays. Because they bankrupt to many times leaving people on the AirPorts on they back home or in worst situations.

How escrow for ICOs which are not assets like http://digix.io or hardware related like https://bnktothefuture.com/pitches/2893/_embs-ether-mining-backed-security-fund.html
??

In my opinion escrow for strongly software related ICOs should be an institution or software house which will have in mind keeping good reputation - like software house working often with Venture Capital and similar.

Escrow should release funds after reaching milestones after proper Quality of Service tests and  Software tests.
Reaching part of milestone results in receiving part of funds. After bugfixing and patches. With IO or DO decisions can be also altered by community...

Why not ?