My recent use of BlackBank Market, Multi-Sig Escrow, Feedback & Questions

I was a vendor on TorEscrow, so after they decided to up and steal everyones BTC, I decided to try and migrate to a mulit-sig escrow market. I liked the layout of BlackBank and the mods were willing to grant me a free vendor account so I have setup shop their. I thought my first multi-sig transaction would take a while to figure out, but it literally takes about 30 seconds to do. It was suprisingly easy and fast. I suggest ALL vendors start using multi-sig escrow.

I am wondering though, let's just say BlacBank pulled the plug on their website one day or it went down, how would I retrieve the funds from completed transactions? Is it possible? Would brainwallet be involved in the process? Would I need some type of off market communication with my customers or something?

i don't mean to sound like a noob, but I am when it comes to multi-sig. Any input would be greatly appreciated.


Comments


[1 Points] owockEznan:

This is the hard part -- you'd have to either have each customer hand over to you their key for you to sign a tx to finalize payment, or send them a partially signed tx to complete and broadcast or send back to you to broadcast. In order to create the tx, if you already don't have it, you will need the redeemScript, which is made with the 3 public keys used in the address, along with some other bits. The rest of the info you need may be found on the blockchain.

https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/3966071 is a great reference on how to craft and sign p2sh transactions using bitcoin-core. My weapon of choice when dealing with raw tx is pybtctools.

Of course, getting the customer to hand over their keys or sign may be the most difficult part. If they have lost their key, become unreachable, or simply refuse to help than you cannot get your funds. Best to hope you have loyal customers.