Escrow
A mechanism that holds an asset and payment until both sides of a trade are satisfied. On TON marketplaces escrow is implemented as a smart contract that atomically swaps the asset and the payment or refunds the deposit if conditions fail.
Aliases: on-chain escrow, escrow contract
Escrow is a neutral middleman holding value until both parties meet the conditions of a trade. On a blockchain the middleman is a smart contract that ties asset transfer and payment into a single atomic step, removing the “I shipped first, you didn’t pay” failure mode.
How on-chain escrow works
- Seller deposits an NFT or jetton into the escrow contract along with a price.
- Buyer sends the required amount of TON or jetton to the contract.
- The contract verifies the amount and — in a single transaction — transfers the NFT to the buyer and the payment to the seller.
- If payment is not received within a timeout, the seller can withdraw the NFT.
Because both legs settle in one transaction, neither side can default after receiving their half.
Context on TON
- Telegram gift marketplaces (Portals, Tonnel, MRKT, Getgems) wrap every listing in an escrow contract.
- Peer-to-peer NFT offers often deploy a one-shot escrow contract on the fly.
- DEX aggregators and cross-chain bridges follow the same pattern via HTLCs (hash time-locked contracts) — see cross-chain-bridge.
Risks
- Buggy contract. If the escrow code is unaudited, a seller could be locked out of their own asset. Cross-check the marketplace’s published audit report.
- Centralised cancel keys. Some implementations retain a platform key that can extract assets without consent — this defeats the purpose of escrow and should be avoided.
Related terms
- multisig — alternative custody mechanism
- smart-contract
- audit