Roles and responsibilities

Maker

The maker publishes the bounty, terms, deadline, check-in interval, refund address, and dispute-resolution choice. After acceptance, the maker constructs and funds the real escrow. The maker reviews delivery, cooperates with taker on a valid payout, or opens a dispute.

Taker

The taker clarifies and accepts terms, supplies a payout address, and—before starting to work—verifies the escrow vTXO. They then check in according to the terms, and submits work. After delivering the final work, taker cooperates with maker to release escrow funds to the taker, or opens a dispute.

Jurors and oracles

Jurors enter juror registry by staking a bond in Bitcoin. They remain available during a dispute, review evidence, publish vote, and sign the winning spend in human-mode dispute resolution.

Oracle operators bond Bitcoin, monitor declared data sources, publish signed attestations, and sign outcomes in oracle-mode dispute resolution.

Supporting roles

A watcher collects signatures and assembles witnesses but holds no keys. Anyone can run a watcher service, but takers have the strongest incentive, because they want to construct the spending transaction to get paid.

Platform developers can slash bond vTXOs with their governance keys, to punish dishonest oracles and jurors. Governance keys are not embedded in escrow, they can only slash.

Ark Operator

The Ark server run by Ark Labs co-signs transactions and enforces SDK policy, but cannot spend an escrow leaf alone.