Notes on Personal Responsibility, XmrBazaar Green Trust Levels, Escrow, and BondsMost people hate personal responsibility more than they hate the state.
I always knew this in theory. What I didn’t expect was to get daily, front-row proof from the hardest-core privacy maximalists on earth: the same crowd that already ditched fiat, KYC, and every centralized exchange for Monero, DEXs, and XmrBazaar.
Yesterday I woke up to a shiny new 1-star review on my mediator listing: the oldest unfinished escrow I still had hanging around. My first reaction wasn’t annoyance: it was genuine excitement. Negative life experiences either teach you how to get better, hand you killer case-study material, or (jackpot!) both.
The trade in question had actually finished successfully months earlier, no dispute, both parties happy. The seller just couldn’t be bothered to wait for their wallet to sync because their internet is apparently powered by two very tired and hungry hamsters on a wheel. So they asked me (politely but firmly) to “just release the funds already” because the transaction was old (= sync was taking forever), browser was misbehaving… and while I was at it, could I maybe debug their phone, router, and life choices too? (They deleted the message later once they discovered the magical land of decent Wi-Fi and everything suddenly worked. The initial request had been… almost reasonable 🙃)
This isn’t a one-off. Literally every mediator I’ve talked to gets the same “plz fix it” messages: and 95 % of the time it’s not an “escrow bug” at all. (From my experience: it’s almost always your browser or VPN). I always try to help because I also wear an XmrBazaar team hat. But that help comes from the “team member” hat, not the “mediator” hat. As we onboard more normal-human (“civilian”) mediators who are not part-time tech shamans, it’s time to reset expectations.
So what actually is a mediator on XmrBazaar?A mediator is simply one keyholder in a non-custodial 2-of-3 Monero multisig wallet:
- The buyer holds one key
- The seller holds one key
- The mediator holds the third key
Any two keys are required to spend the funds.
That means no single person - not the buyer, not the seller, and definitely not the mediator - has a magic “just release the funds” button.
What a mediator CAN do:- Resolve a real dispute (buyer wants refund, seller wants payout) by picking a side and signing & syncing with that side.
- Finalize a non-disputed trade when both parties already agreed (made decision) but one person ghosted before syncing. The mediator finalizes a non-disputed transaction together with the remaining party.
What a mediator CANNOT do:- Do your job for you. You still have to create and sync your own signature on your own device.
- Remotely fix your 2006 router, your phone, your laptop, your ISP, your VPS, your browsers, or your toaster.
- Provide both missing signatures so you can keep napping (if your trade partner vanished, you still have to show up and sign & sync your part even if your internet is slow). The mediator only has their one signature.
- Feed your dog or raise your kids: Some responsibilities are forever yours.
In short: A mediator is a tie-breaker with a key, not your personal tech-support genie.
Here is
XmrBazaar Escrow Guide with screenshots and zero sarcasm :)
Read the full post
here (charts + memes included).
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