Conditional escrow

Many trades are not "pay now, receive now": payment depends on a second leg, a deadline or an event that has to be proven. Today that means an escrow agent who holds the money and whom both sides must trust. On BATHRON the escrow is a covenant: it releases when the condition is proven and refunds when the timeout passes, and no agent holds the principal in between. Lightning and plain Bitcoin transactions remain the better choice for ordinary payments; this pattern starts only where a condition is attached.

The flow

A Clearing Provider quotes an execution path and a timeout path in the client's familiar assets — amount, fees, deadline, refund route. Liquidity Provider inventory funds the conditional M1 leg. A proven event releases the settlement; if it does not occur, the client's commitment follows the specified refund path.

client BTC commitment -> quoted condition
                             | condition proven
                             v
                    CP/LP internal covenant -> recipient leg
                             |
                             +-- timeout -> client refund path

The client is not asked to hold or spend M0/M1; the condition is evaluated in BATHRON's settlement state, and the client sees only the quoted BTC path.

Conditions a covenant can check

• a confirmed Bitcoin payment — TX_CONFIRMED proves the payment is buried under the in-consensus header chain;
• a designated signature — CSFS verifies a signature from a named key over agreed data;
• an expiry — CSV/CLTV enforce the timeout;
• a forced destination — CTV constrains where the released funds may go.

What must be defined

Every execution and refund branch has to be spelled out — Bitcoin-side timelock ordering, reorganisation handling, wallet verification — before a flow can promise that no agent can take the principal. That specification is a design target, not a current general guarantee; see Status & claims.

Primitives: TX_CONFIRMED · CTV · CSV / CLTV · CSFS · confidential internal transfers

See also: Build your first application