Bitcoin bounties for GitHub work, escrowed in 2-of-3 multisig
A platform for working from anywhere and getting paid in bitcoin, with 2-of-3 multisig escrow holding the bounties.
app/multisig_wallet.py and app/wallet.py alongside github.py,
twitter.py, cli.py and marketplace_server.py. The landing copy exists in
fourteen translations, which says something about who it was for.
The bounty problem is trust in both directions. A funder will not pay before the work is done; a worker will not work before the money is somewhere visible. A platform holding the funds solves that and creates a new problem, which is that the platform can now steal.
2-of-3 multisig is the right shape and it is why this is the early repo I would still defend. Funder, worker and platform each hold a key, and any two can spend. On the happy path funder and worker sign the release together and the platform’s key is never used, so the normal case does not depend on the platform being honest or even online. In a dispute the platform’s key becomes a tiebreaker with one of the two parties, enough to settle, never enough to take the funds alone.
The unsolved half is the acceptance oracle. A merged pull request is the obvious “done” signal and it is revocable, and a merge reverted an hour later has already released the escrow.