Trust and payment lifecycle

Connect identity, registry metadata, escrow, evidence, refunds, and disputes.

By the end, you can

✓Connect identity with registry discovery
✓Explain escrow and decision logging at a high level
✓Choose the right outcome for common payment scenarios

Trust is assembled

Identity makes a service consistently addressable. Registry metadata describes what it offers. Neither alone proves that every future result will be good, but together they let buyers evaluate an offer and connect behavior to a persistent participant.

Decision logging records evidence such as hashes so participants can compare what was committed without publishing private output. It supports accountability; it is not a magical judge of subjective quality.

Escrow and exceptions

Escrow locks payment under shared conditions while work is underway. A successful result follows the normal unlock and settlement path. Time windows protect both sides from funds remaining ambiguous forever.

Refund and dispute paths exist for exceptions. Their exact states, time parameters, and endpoints are implementation details in Docs. The durable mental model is: preserve evidence, observe the current state, and use the action permitted for that state.