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Protocol Spotlight: Unicrow
Recorded: June 24, 2025 Duration: 1:09:19Space Recording
Short Summary
Unicro is making waves in the crypto space with its innovative escrow protocol designed for real-world commerce, showcasing its potential to integrate with AI agents and disrupt traditional marketplaces. As the project launches, it aims to establish partnerships and capitalize on emerging trends in blockchain technology.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Test, test, test hey hearing you loud and clear how you doing Tomas
wrong speaker all right I can hear you well awesome yeah good to hear you man i'm excited for this one today how you doing today uh i'm
good despite the unbearable heat and you what do you have that 26 degree heat wave going on where
you are probably for me anything about 25 is unbearable. Yep. Yep.
Oh, man.
Yeah, it's probably 30 every day in Bali.
I don't know.
Anything below 30 is unbearable for me.
I don't know how. Because we, you know, I'm just from,, genetics are, are basically the same as yours. Like we've got,
um, check in the family and like just a bunch of European mixtures.
I grew up in a fairly cold place too. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. In the Northeast is like,
there's no, there's no reason that i should be so cold and tolerant but
for whatever reason i am and uh so um how's bali on the opposite side of the world uh
in a tropical island how's bali it's awesome man it's so so good um had a couple big swells this week surfing um there was uh it was it was like
eight meters uh about eight meter faces um so that was really awesome and uh exhilarating
and you mean eight meter wave yeah yeah holy crap that's scary yeah yeah it's a little scary until you're out there and then
there's like no ability to be scared because you're in those situations um where like i i find
this this actually gets me a lot of mileage in life like there are certain times where I can afford to get worried about something, but because there's like a reasonable chance that it'll actually work out or because it's not that serious.
But when things actually get serious, you can't panic. You just have to do.
And this has been like my experience surfing bigger waves.
And that's one of the things that I appreciate about it is it really,
it puts me at my, at my edge.
So I'm, I'm like pushing the edge of my,
my comfort zone and potential and things like that.
So surfing is a big wave surfing is that for me.
Yeah. Yeah, man. How's everything else going?
We haven't caught up in a while.
Yeah. It's difficult to say the least.
It's difficult, to say the least.
But, yeah, getting there, trying to turn things around.
Yeah, well, I guess we should catch up all those separately.
Yeah, sorry to put you on the spot.
We will do that.
All good, all good.
So, yeah, man, give it i should i should give you the american
answer yeah it's awesome everything yeah doing fine doing fine yeah yeah it's the american answer
um yeah yeah let's uh we'll give it another couple minutes um i think these are a little bit odd
hours for most of the people that will listen to this
eventually. But what I was thinking of doing with the space is just kind of going over like what
Unicro is, because it's, it's an awesome primitive. And it's, we've been showcasing. Yeah, this is a
good way to, this is a good way to kick it off. So we've been showcasing censorship resistant protocols or protocols that
enable others to be censorship resistant when building on top of them. And Unicro is one of
those in my mind. And it was one of the first that came to my mind when we started doing this
series. And I'm glad we're finally getting to speak about it. So with that, let's jump right
into it. And I'll have you, Tomas, introduce yourself and then I can share a bit
because the way we met is pretty interesting and notable in itself.
But yeah, please introduce yourself and tell us how did you get into crypto and when
and take it from there.
Sure.
So Tomas, I'm a co-founder of Gunny Crow. when and take it from there. Sure.
So Tomas, I'm a co-founder of Genicrow, obviously.
Before then, I had a little bit of banking IT career
and using project management for that leadership
in the old world.
And how I, so I, you know,
I've been a libertarian for more than 20 years.
And I'm also a techie, a software developer.
So that was a very natural mix to stumble across Bitcoin very, very early.
So that was around 2011 that I heard about Bitcoin probably from a friend from the libertarian
community is my guess.
And it was pretty obvious immediately to me.
Oh, yeah.
This is scarce, digital, medium of exchange, permissionless, censorship resistant, and all of that.
But scarce was the important factor that as someone who's been oddly interested in Austrian
business cycle theory and the impact of inflation for a long time, that resonated with me a
and the impact of inflation for a long time,
that resonated with me a lot.
lot.
So, yeah, it became pretty obvious pretty quickly,
but honestly, I didn't do much about it for another two years.
And then in 2013, I lived in Singapore by then,
and I wanted to get my favorite uh uh cafe to accept bitcoin and they um we we couldn't
really find a good uh point of sale solution point of sale solution so i just hacked one together
over a weekend um and it worked you know uh the owner was happy with it and he started accepting
The owner was happy with it and he started accepting Bitcoin and it kind of caught on.
You know, I gave it a website and all and it looked like it could even be a business.
So I decided to to focus on that full time.
But obviously it turned out to be way too early.
So that was my first sort of like bitcoin or crypto startup for uh if
you will and uh after that you know i had to uh get back to paying my bill channel um and moved
to switzerland and started uh um after after having a job here um I started Unicrow with, yeah, it's kind of a continuation of
the same theme, if you will, which I've been obsessing about for more than a decade now,
which is just making crypto useful in real world commerce, real world commerce transactions.
uh real world commerce transactions um whereas this time it's you know trying to
use the power of the smart smart contract to disintermed this in term disintermediate um
uh transactions that's called transactions uh you know real world transactions where
where trust is uh perhaps lacking and you need to secure the payments
Between the two parties. So that's what you've got me here. That's where I am. We launched Bitcoin
Sorry, Unicor a while ago. And yeah, maybe just to chime in on the
On the way we met. So we met at eZenver in a diner
I love America. I'm obsessed with anything american
um except of the government obviously um and the wars and and stuff um so uh you know whenever i
have a chance i i like to eat uh in a diner uh so we we met there though we met through our common
friend but we ended up getting to talk for real real in the diner and found out our common Bitcoin Cash history.
Full disclosure there.
I believed in Bitcoin Cash.
Still, I guess I never really left the community.
So I'm very much in line with that ethos. So we shared our common history there and then we shared our common interest in unstoppable protocols, if you will, and censorship resistant and real utility of crypto.
And I guess the rest is history.
Yeah, yeah. And man, so rest is history. Yeah.
Yeah.
And man, so you got in.
I want to call attention to this.
You got in effectively in 2013, but you found Bitcoin in 2011.
And a lot of people will claim OG status or people will say, I feel like the goalposts have moved as time has gone on, where OG used to mean around 2011, 2012, 2013.
And now people are like, yeah, wow, you're an OG.
2017, 2018, you got in around ICOs or whatever.
But no, you're actually like a true OG in the Bitcoin space, as many of us were who were in Bitcoin cash.
And I forgot we had that common history. But the thing that was coming to my mind was when we met
at, I think when we first met and interacted, it was at a Filecoin meetup at East Denver, and you had rolling papers that were effectively a business card for Unicro.
And they were branded with Unicro.
And I was like, oh, yep, I get the product market fit instantly.
And so maybe as comfortable as you may be sharing, I'm curious to hear about the role of the Silk Road in your crypto journey and maybe even like as it relates to Unicro.
But we can we can keep that at a high level.
The space is recorded and like we don't have to talk about things that may be incriminating.
But I'm curious about this.
But I'm curious about this.
Honestly, there's nothing to talk about that would be incriminating
simply because Unicro is built on EVM,
and EVM famously has, at least for now,
no real notion of privacy or anonymity or anything like that.
So we never thought that Unicro could be a realistic use for that.
Monero does a great job catering to those transactions.
You know, rest in peace, Archetype, just a few days ago.
So, yeah, that was never an ambition.
We always thought that, and especially, you know, coupled with stable coins,
that Unicro could be hopefully very useful in applications like trade finance, in, you know,
over the board, marketplaces of all kinds. You know, these days we think there's a big potential in AI marketplaces.
We'll get to that.
So anyway, point is, I don't think there's anything incriminating to talk about there.
But yes, Silk Road, you know, I'm a big admirer of the vision, of the attempt.
You know, as many of us uh try to support
ross both financially and otherwise as much as possible and ross's mother and and the uh you
know the effort to get him out of the cage um and you know extremely extremely happy that that he
he did get out um and he can live his life again uh so it was a
you know big inspiration ross is one of our biggest uh biggest heroes and you know to the og status
and at the end of the day what does it matter um what matters is if you're building uh useful and
used um and uh you know if someone came to this space a couple of years ago, but built something amazing that people love and that is doing something useful, then good for them.
And arguably, they've done something more than, unfortunately, I've been perhaps able to achieve so far.
So, you know, it's not necessarily like Warren Buffett says in this case, where it's not timing the market, it's time in the market.
So I've been in the market for some time, so to speak.
But there are people who, in a fraction of the time, delivered more value.
And that's something I admire much more.
And that's something I admire much more.
You know, I appreciate that humility, but I would push back a little bit.
And I would say what you've built is a fully censorship resistant primitive that is never going to disappear.
It's always going to be accessible on the EVM.
And I think protocols will leverage it into the future, especially considering how lightweight it is.
It's audited and, you know audited, and the kinds of applications.
So to your point about timing the market, I think, yes, Unicro has been early to the kinds of
applications that would use it, or compared to where the market is for the kinds of applications
that will use it. But I see many of those applications starting
to be built now. And we'll definitely talk about ZKTLS in a bit, which opens up the network
effect breaking power of blockchains and programmable cryptography. But I think Unicro is positioned to be used by all of the
kinds of protocols that are likely to reach mainstream in the next several years. So I
will definitely have to talk about this more later in this space and maybe even offline. But
I mean, I appreciate what you've built.
It's elegant, it's lightweight, and it's a really powerful primitive. So maybe with that,
we can talk about what is Unicro and how does it work? And then we'll talk about what kind
of protocols it's being used in, what it could be used for and all of that stuff so what is unicrow how does it
work yeah so um unicrow just uh just give me a quick sec here okay um yep okay so so unicrow is
a is an uh oh hang on i'm getting an echo here. Oh, yeah.
Just mute your mic on the Unicro account.
I'm not hearing the echo, but I'm familiar.
I just saw Unicro pop into the space.
So I'm familiar with how this goes.
Troubleshooted it many times.
Okay.
Okay. Sorry for that.
So Unicrow is an escrow protocol for ETH and ERC20 tokens.
It's permissionless, it's immutable, which was a very important factor, feature, property.
And it actually has a mechanism which we can talk about, which makes it possible to have an escrow without a third party.
Arguably, that's the first time in history.
That's the first time in history.
We never really ended up pushing that feature because we realized quickly that potential integrators would still prefer to have that third-party arbitration under their control or outsource that arbitration under their control.
arbitration under control, but that's something special and interesting.
But that's something special and interesting.
It has multiple ways for platforms to integrate it.
It's starting with obviously native smart contract or Web3 integration using ABI, but then an SDK,
TypeScript SDK, which can be used to integrate it directly
into your UI or you can use the built in UI toolkit to save you
even even more effort.
Recently, we introduced a WordPress plugin that integrates into woocommerce
and docon so if you have a woocommerce shop or importantly a multi-vendor marketplace uh running
on docon which is a another major um wordpress e-commerce plugin um then you can process crypto, like stablecoin payments,
for example, using Unicro.
And just a couple of days ago, we launched an MCP server.
For those not familiar, MCp is a model context protocol it's a language that
ai agents use to speak with or rather llms speak with with other external services they can access
external data and agents ai agents use it to speak speak with other services as well and with each
other. And it's something we came across in customer research that we were conducting
recently where AI agent builders expressed a need that if they want to do commerce with other agents, then they would need some native support of escrow.
So that's what we launched a couple of days ago,
just the first basic version.
We will work on enriching that and maybe launch one or two other MCP service
to complement it with other related services.
That's awesome. So it's a recap, like configurable escrow protocol, and it's immutable,
fully censorship resistant, it's on EVM, and it works for any ERC-20 as well as ETH.
It works for any ERK20 as well as ETH.
Yeah, runs on Arbitrum and Base right now.
Sorry.
Yes, Arbitrum and Base.
OK, Arbitrum and Base.
I didn't know you guys were on Base yet.
That's great.
Yeah, that was a request from a platform that should be kind
of soft launched already, but it's soft launching as we speak.
Nice. Nice.
Yeah, the way I've always conceptualized Unicro is like Alice and Bob want to transact,
so they appoint Charlie as a trusted third party between them,
but Charlie is not the trusted third party for everybody who interacts on Unicro.
interacts on Unicrow. So there's the ability for non-custodial Web 2 clones to arbitrate
their users' transactions or enable their users to configure or set a point, an escrow
agent in common that is separate from the platform. And I think there's so much room
for these kinds of protocols to now devour the incumbents. So we can maybe talk about that,
but I definitely want to talk about where you found product market fit so far and where you're finding it with AI agents because that in itself is a
large landscape. So that's a cool, exciting frontier to be on. So maybe we can talk about
those things first, like where you found PMF, product market fit, and then where you're seeing
this deployed currently. And then we can talk about um you know maybe the potential
future uses of unicrow yeah so importantly about the the arbitrator um the important property there
is that uh the arbitrator uh has very strict um permissions if you will um so there are two
third-party roles um the transaction. Obviously,
there's the buyer and the seller, and then there's the arbitrator, as I mentioned, and there's a
marketplace. And the marketplace, so marketplace is obviously the platform that integrates Unicrow
that needs to facilitate payments with escrow between their users. But what happens or what Unicrow ensures is that the marketplace can collect fees,
which is why they would want to put themselves there as a third-party role,
so they can define their address and a percentage fee that they receive but that's all
they can do they only receive a fee once the transaction is concluded um and and they receive
it to to that fixed address or predefined address so um they don't have they don't hold custody of
the funds uh at any point and almost the same uh is valid for the arbitrator who uh so that's just an
address for unicrow it's completely you know agnostic um it's just an ethereum address that
has the right to um release the payment refund the payment to to the buyer or split it uh between them
by some percentage.
But again, they don't hold custody.
They can't freeze the funds.
They can't move the funds elsewhere.
They simply can decide how should the funds be split between those two.
And again, they take fee for that service.
So the keyword that we are kind of using or the property that encapsulates all of these that we've talked about so far is that it's trust
minimize so really the the requirements to trust anyone is kept at an absolute absolute minimum
now in terms of product market fit I mean you could say there we
haven't found it really yet so we have two platforms which soft launched already
one is effective acceleration marketplace which is marketplace for
humans to ask you know either other but importantly, AI agents to do some jobs, sort of like Upwork
style, if you will.
They are in commercial transactions.
So they integrated various services, so they didn't need to build um themselves to in order to facilitate uh
transactions between people and their main value proposition is that they are uh the trusted uh
third party that uh you know prevent you know scams you could call or you could say um and they use escrow or unicrow as their escrow infrastructure as well
i guess let me take that's huge right here and let you ask more questions
no that's huge i hadn't um i don't think i'd picked up the uh acceleration market um what
did you call that again effective Effective acceleration. Effective acceleration
marketplace. That's news to me. That's sick. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned the escrow
is for people paying other people and potentially, and importantly, AI agents. but I actually think if there is going to be something like ASI or AGI or autonomous
agents that are actually autonomous, it's more likely that those agents would be paying people
to carry out tasks in the real world on their behalf. And so this kind of thing would be an
important primitive there as well. And that's maybe more of a sci-fi tangent that might not be worth going on,
but it's also really cool to think about because it expands the total addressable market for Unicro.
So that's cool that it's getting picked up in a couple of marketplaces.
And those are generally the kinds of applications that I've
had in mind of like where Unicro makes sense, right? Like Upwork, Uber, Airbnb, which each,
you know, Airbnb, it's on its own is 1% of the world GDP in terms of volume. I heard this.
Wait, what?
Yeah. It is the transactions, the transactions that are going on in Airbnb is 1% of the world economy.
I find it very, very hard to believe.
I heard it the other day.
I'm pretty sure I heard it from Brian Chesky on some Twitter or something.
For sake.
Wow.
I'm way off on this.
It's a very embarrassing, misquoted statistic,
but I'm fairly sure it was 1%
because I was shocked at the order.
Wow, okay.
So, yeah, I mean, what was, I'm sorry.
Oh, yeah, so in terms of the AI agent,
so, you know, the important thing there, and Roger Vier,
and was talking about this a long time ago already, and Eric Borges said it a couple of years ago,
and obviously many people picked up on that already, is that AI agents are not able to open a bank account, are not able to hold a card.
They even up work and these platforms, they even prohibit AI agents to sign up and perform
to sign up and perform tasks on the platform.
tasks on the platform.
So they are kind of prohibited from engaging in real world commerce
in the legacy sense or on the legacy rail.
But they can hold crypto wallets, obviously.
No one's able to stop them from doing that.
So they will be able to engage in from doing that so um you know they will be able to to engage in in commerce uh
by a crypto rails and uh and again you know i was helping out with uh or i'm helping out with uh
with a customer discovery and and some other work for for a different um ai project and um
for a different AI project.
And this came up when speaking with AI agent builders
and asking them about possibility in their agents engaging in commerce
with other agents.
And they brought it up that, yes, for sure,
but we might need an escrow for that.
So the fit seems to be there.
We'll see how it materializes in the long run.
But that might be a potential in our niche.
That's a really interesting niche to have,
especially because of how much the narrative has evolved around AI agents. And
reminds me, I'll have to introduce you to some people. But yeah, that's a category of
protocols that I hadn't considered or users that I hadn't considered that Unicro addresses.
Before moving on to the other category, I did want to talk about some of the other
features of the other category in my mind are these marketplaces. And I want to talk to you
about ZKTLS and see how you think about that and if it's come across your radar recently
because of how I see marketplace apps evolving in the near future. But before we do that, I'm curious about,
you mentioned the reputation system that can be built or computed from Unicro.
And actually, no, you didn't mention the reputation system.
I'm getting a step ahead.
You mentioned the arbitration and how arbitration works.
And I would love to talk about that.
And then we can talk about maybe a reputation system that emerges from that.
Yep.
Yeah, I didn't mention the reputation.
You just did your homework.
Because, yeah, it is mentioned somewhere.
But so the arbitration is fairly simple. When the escrow is created, an arbitrator
is defined simply by an Ethereum address and a fee, which can be zero. And that address from that point onward has a right to call an arbitrate function with two parameters, which are the percentage or tips to be specific.
should be split between the buyer and the seller so uh you know by defining uh perhaps zero and
100 that uh releases the payment to the seller 100 and zero refunds it to to the buyer or you know
if you define 50 50 or sorry again 5 000 5 000 uh technically um then you split it 50-50 between those two. And an arbitrator takes a fee always.
I mean, if they're defined with a fee,
then even if the payment is concluded in a normal kind of standard way,
they take the fee as well.
It's so elegant.
It's just such a neat
system. And if I'm remembering
correctly, you guys did this all
in like 800 lines of solidity.
Is that accurate or is that just the main
contract that has that? Or what am I
remembering? It was the
total of the contracts were 800-ish.
I forget what's the
term. The net lines or something, you know,
when the comments are strict and all.
So basically only what the auditor, because this is the number important for the auditor.
Yeah.
So yeah, it was around 800, 850 maybe.
it was around 800 and 850 maybe that's amazing and and and i think it's it's not just for the
That's amazing.
auditor but like the the way that i fit that in the way that the reason i think that's so cool
is because for other builders that want to build on top of this like they yeah they can be they can
rest assured that the auditor didn't have too much to look at. So they probably caught the important things, the critical vulnerabilities.
But the other part is it's gas efficient.
So it's not going to cost an arm and a leg.
You're on Arbitrum and Base now, but even on Mainnet,
it's not going to cost a ton.
And that's really powerful for an immutable primitive like this.
Yeah, exactly.
We could run this on maintenance with current gas prices.
It would be, actually, I don't know how much, but it would probably still be sub $1.
But yeah, I mean, it's the nice thing about this being really sort of a new primitive, that
we are not dependent on any other primitives.
This is very enclosed system, set of smart contracts, which are not calling any other
smart contract.
So it's not building on any Legos.
Not that there's anything wrong with that obviously
creates amazing opportunities but the point of this is to be extremely tight knit uh and uh
uh you know lightweight and um most importantly um secure um and yeah that's exactly kind of achieved by that simplicity. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
All of it is very security oriented in both senses,
the technical security and the economic security of the protocol
where there are no outside dependencies and you can't upgrade it.
So it's not through a proxy or anything.
Yeah, the non-upgradability is a little bit annoying.
Yeah, you upgrade it, but you have to do a second version.
But that is the most secure way to do smart contracts
if you're building for the future of the next 100 years,
not just the next five.
And so, um, so, so we've talked a little bit about the, uh,
the arbitration system. How about reputation?
Like how does reputation emerge from the Unicro protocol?
So the, um, the idea is that when there'll be history
associated with your address, whether you're a buyer
or a seller or even an arbitrator or even a marketplace,
then you accumulate reputation based on that history.
Now, to be clear clear it's only positive reputation in a sense
uh or you know it you only accumulate in a positive direction because if it goes negative
um too much then you know you just nuke your identity and start over uh or abandon your identity and start over. But that's still very insightful and valuable.
So if you're a seller, then you accumulate a history of doing a lot of successful non-disputed
deals, or even if they're disputed, then perhaps the arbitrator mostly decides them in your favor.
If you're a buyer, again, if you buy a lot, if you don't dispute, even if there's an option
in Unicro to release the payment before the escrow period or the challenge period, how
we call it, ends. So if you do that as a buyer frequently, then you accumulate good reputation in the system,
perhaps get access to better deals, et cetera.
And as an arbitrator, if you get repeatedly called to arbitrate escrows, even perhaps after deciding against
someone and yet, you know, then called back again, etc. So all of this can be kind of
populated and calculated into some headline number for each identity. It is read-only.
We originally thought about writing
it on-chain, but then realized that's pointless.
So it can
calculated. It could
be included in the SDK.
It could be
provided as a source
for the marketplaces to
add on top of their own reputation system, perhaps.
And because it's read-only, it can be tweaked over time
to reflect the reality, perhaps better.
But alas, we are not there yet.
I love that.
No, it's so beautiful because the important feature is that it's easily verifiable on-chain,
and it just takes a couple of steps to compute.
And so it's an emergent reputation system just created by looking at on-chain data,
created by looking at on-chain data. And it mirrors the UX of eBay. I remember back 10
and it mirrors the UX of eBay.
years ago when everybody still used eBay, you would have sellers and they would just
have a number of transactions, of positive transactions next to their name. They didn't
say it was like 99.99% positive until you clicked through into that number. Because the important thing that
people needed to know is, is this person generally a good actor? Are they generally going to be good
to trade over the internet with? And so this is going to give that same granularity to the data, but you could even go further and compute that
percentage of times that a given participant went to dispute, or a number of times that a given
arbitrator released escrow before the challenge period ended, or, you know, different
metrics that you could use. And all of these are very quickly and easily computable for the,
you know, marketplaces or even the participants to compute with on-chain data themselves if they
don't trust the marketplace's evaluation of their own agents, for example. I mean, it's a
really elegant system. And that's what I've
always picked up from Unicrow. So maybe we could give an example of how this works using eBay
transactions. Like let's use Alice, Bob and Charlie, and maybe David, if we need David as
a marketplace or something like that. Can you walk us through like step by step how this will work?
Yeah, so let's use eBay as a marketplace.
Make it simple.
So, you know, Elise wants to buy something from Bob.
Bob is offering it on their shop front at eBay.
at eBay. And so in case of eBay, for example, or I don't know, Chrono24 or many of these,
the assumption is that they also serve as arbitrators for themselves, obviously. So
Alice checks out, selects some product from Bob, goes to the cart, checks out, goes to the payment, selects Unicrow as a payment method.
And then a transaction is serialized, perhaps using Unicrow SDK for Alice's wallet and the transaction includes all the parameters so you know Bob is a seller
the amount let's say she's paying you know something worth hundred dollars in tether so
100 times 100,000 you know tether not 100,000 million million yeah so 100 million uh tether uh way and uh the challenge
period which you know is some time that it should take to deliver the goods plus uh some some uh
you know time reserve there um or tolerance if you will and And what else is there? There's a payment reference, optional. And
then importantly, the arbitrator and the marketplace. So eBay, you know, in this case, would define
themselves as a marketplace that takes, let's say, 10% cut. So they set their address, they set their fee to 10% or 10,000, no, sorry, 1,000 bps,
and an arbitrator, which again, it would be probably themselves as well,
another address that they control in this case, because they charge a fee on their marketplace role,
they probably charge zero fee on the arbitration function
or on their arbitrator role. So they just define arbitrator address. And now if everything is okay,
Alice receives her goods. Then, you know, if she wants to be generous, then she goes to
the eBay interface and clicks or presses release, confirms that in her wallet,
and releases the payment to Bob right after she receives the goods.
If she can't be bothered, of course,
because we don't do that typically when,
well, sometimes we are asked to, I think,
confirm on delivery manually.
Anyway, so if she doesn't,
then after that challenge period ends,
Bob can claim the payment.
Actually, technically anyone can claim the payment.
So the nice thing about that is that eBay can just run a service
that whenever a challenge period ends on any of the escrow,
then they just run a claim function, which releases a payment
from the escrow or sends the balances from the escrow. And the reason why that can be done is
because the smart contract sends it only to the destination address or addresses. So it sends 10% to eBay and the rest minus escrow fee to the seller. So there's
no security risk of anyone running the claim. So this can be like a nice UX service from the
integrators or eBay's side in this case. So the seller receives the payment to their wallet.
eBay receives the fee and all is fine.
Also, the nice thing about this being possible
is that the seller, if they wanted to,
they could have their address defined
or the Bob could define his off-ramp address.
So, I don't know coinbase or
kraken address for for the erc20 token um so that it goes straight there and then they can uh
liquidate it to fiat if they wanted to nice um and then oh yeah go ahead yeah so so then, you know, if something happens and seller acknowledges a problem, then the seller can unilaterally refund.
You know, that's kind of the nice thing that all these things, all these actions can be safely or securely done unilaterally. The buyer can unilaterally release.
Anyone can unilaterally claim or call the claim function.
The seller can unilaterally refund because the smart contract obviously checks who's
calling this, will allow only that address to perform that particular action.
Arbitrator can call Arrate um because the smartphone trick checks that it's the arbitrator's address calling it
and the funds are always sent only where they are supposed to based on uh that uh you know action
and the status of the of the escrow um so uh yeah again, the seller can refund and if there's a dispute,
eBay actually has this similar challenge mechanism as we have, where the buyer can
challenge the payment first if they want to, which in Unicrow, and we're now getting to that
unique mechanism, which if there was no arbitrator would allow for escrow to happen as well without
without the third party so the buyer can call challenge and what challenge does is it now sets
the buyer as a payee of the transaction so it basically sets that you know if the if the if
the escrow period ends now then the buyer can claim the payment
back and it extends the challenge period, which gives seller the time to challenge back
if they don't agree with the buyer's challenge.
So, you know, they could, like the marketplace could have a rule, for example, that, you
know, the buyer needs to challenge first or something and they only step in after the first or second challenge.
But, you know, at any time,
then if there's a dispute,
the arbitrator, which again can be the marketplace themselves,
or they can build their own network of external arbitrators
who would then probably charge separate fees,
can call the arbitrate function and decide what happens with that balance.
Whom should it go to?
You guys clearly spent so much time prepping this as an immutable protocol
to solve challenges.
Maybe. I mean, how much time is the right amount to spend on something
that's going gonna last forever right
like it really you really put the thought in and fine-tuning this for marketplaces and I love that
you know we were talking about the timing of everything and how maybe Unicro was a little
early but uh I would say like that's that could work for you in the long run where it's more lindy because it's been around for longer.
And you really did think about everything, like the refunding early.
That's a thing that happens in traditional marketplace apps like eBay.
And you want that functionality built in.
But you have to anticipate that because you can't just upgrade
the protocol later. So, you know, I think when I think about like the potential product market fit
for this, it is in those marketplace apps. And recently, I've been really excited about ZKTLS.
I've been shilling this since I heard about it at a Zuzalu event around DevConnect in Istanbul last year.
And maybe that was, it might have been two years ago.
Was this even in Istanbul?
I don't remember where we were.
Istanbul was three years ago.
Yeah, it was in the last year, I guess.
So this must have been ECC Belgium. But there was, yeah.
So ZKTLS, for those who are unfamiliar, allows you to use the data from a traditional HTTPS message and get a kind of like a notary that signs off and does the TLS handshake,
the transport layer security handshake with you as a user or with your browser,
and then report the data back and prove cryptographically
that certain data came from a specific source.
And so you can have data from Facebook about how many,
you could have a zero-knowledge proof
around someone's age from Facebook
or around someone's account balances
in their bank account
without sharing any of the other details about that person.
And what this enables at scale
is the breaking of
network effects, because now data is interoperable between Web 2 and Web 3, assuming the security
properties of the ZKTLS protocols hold. So not just the cryptography, but the economic security.
not just the cryptography, but the economic security. And I haven't seen a viable solution
yet to a generalized notary protocol. I've heard that they exist, but no one has shared the details
with me yet. So I'm suspending disbelief. But the ultimate business model that I see, if I were not working on token
dynamics, I would be finding the most interesting, most viable Web2 marketplace app to clone,
whether that is Uber and Lyft or Airbnb and Vrbo or whatever these are, and I would build an aggregator
using ZKTLS to pull all of the data from those applications. And then I would insert my own
Web3 counterpart as a low-cost competitor and then siphon the network effects of these apps by building an aggregator on top of them using
ZKTOS. And for that, you could also build in Unicrow as an escrow agent because there are
three value propositions of blockchains and their applications. There is programmable assets where
you can tell the assets to do stuff like streaming money or, you know, different, different other
features that you can add into it. There's verifiable transparency or like configurable
privacy features. So you have a varying degree of privacy, whether it's more valuable for your
users to have, you know, visibility into transactions as it is in Unicro, or whether it's more beneficial to them
to have privacy in their transactions or even anonymity. And then there's censorship resistance.
And so Unicro enables the one in three for these Web3 clones of Web2 applications.
these Web3 clones of Web2 applications.
And so this is the sort of frontier that I see for marketplace apps
and the reason that I believe Web3 clones of marketplaces are just around the corner.
This is the killer business model that I think they should all adopt.
So if there's anyone listening to this that's hearing this later,
please reach out to me.
I have thought a lot about this business model and I want
to see it succeed. I would even be interested to help you. But Tomas, how do you think about this?
Have you seen similar things with ZKTOS? And how do you see the future of Unicro's
product market fit and expansion into different places.
product market fit and expansion into different places?
I honestly haven't thought about this at all.
But the way you put it absolutely makes sense.
So once you get all those three together,
then at least from the point of utility,
there clearly is one and a superior one to the established legacy solutions and platforms. and all that but you know there are people who are
I guess much better positioned and experienced
in achieving
that so
yeah
would love to
I guess
if anyone reaches out to you about this
then definitely would love to
talk
yeah I mean I'm to keep showing that business model
to everybody that comes to me with a Web3 clone.
But because I think, and it makes so much more sense to me
that they would use Unicro instead of trying to roll their own escrow agent
or like, God forbid, be the custodian of these funds.
Like you look at Silk Road,
like the US government agencies stole Ross's Bitcoin
or stole the Silk Road's Bitcoin, not just Ross's.
And that was because it was a custodial marketplace,
whereas Unicro enables a non-custodial marketplace.
And I think we're just around the corner from seeing these.
And the added benefit of censorship resistance in this case is that you can, together with ZKTLS,
completely displace incumbents. They can't do fuck all about it. And I would love to see that happen
to disintermediate these really cool Web2 apps that have arisen over the last 10 years,
but cut the end costs to the consumer in half?
I mean, to be fair,
Hobbscoach is, I think, very close
to what you're talking about.
So, Hobbscoach is a trade.
you know, hopscotch.trade.
Perhaps, you know, I'll connect you with the founder, Morgan,
Perhaps,
and it's something that you guys could talk about.
Also, Mike Michelini, do you remember Purse.io?
Yeah, I loved Purse.
Yeah, exactly.
So Mike bought Purse.
Basically, I mean, the asset that was the most interesting there
was the list of clients.
And has been trying to turn that original vision into something more akin to what you're talking about.
So really decentralized in the marketplace because he's a long time, very successful,
quite successful Amazon and Shopify seller, I believe.
And, you know, fed up with those and was looking to build something,
something that would displace them
or replace them with the Web3 version.
So, you know, and who knows,
maybe at one point they will integrate Unicrow as well.
Right now, they're not simply doing escrow transactions at all,
so they don't need it.
But hopefully, if they get to that at one point, then they will.
So those two might be very close to that vision that you outlined.
Yeah, I'm looking at Hopscotch's website right now now hopscotch.trade it that looks great um they use
xmtp for message encryption which is cool and uh they've got you guys in the back end so they could
absolutely you know they position themselves as a competitor to facebook marketplace but they could
use the photos from and and the information from facebook and then port all of that over to their own
alternative front end with not too much extra work through ZKTLS. So I think that is a good fit
for this kind of business model that I'm describing. And I would love to see them
aggregate, for example,
Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp
and all of these other marketplace apps
to bootstrap their network effect.
Yeah, I'll check with Morgan
and make sure to make the connection.
How are you on time?
Like five, ten more minutes?
I should be wrapping up.
But, yeah, I can give it a few more minutes.
Okay.
We have the doctor want to come up and ask a question.
So I pulled him up as a speaker.
And after that, we can maybe close out with what you're looking ahead for and how people can contact you.
But before that, doctor, do you want to ask Tomas a question about Unicro?
Thanks, Nate.
Hi, Tomas.
It's nice to meet you. I was wondering if you ever thought about
integrating or trying to look at what Ethos Network is doing with the staking of the ETH to for reputation of social standing with Unicrow and then trying to get through,
with Unicro and then trying to get through, trying to expand your marketplace through
something like Ethos Network. Has that ever come up?
No, not really. I haven't. I'm sorry. Is that Ethos?
Yeah, it's called Ethos Network. So the whole idea is with ethos network is that people stake their staked eth
for reputation of specific individuals the more reputation you get the more stake you
you assume it's it's a basic it's a basic way of earning social reputation right now the social
reputation is all based on what people post but i see a way where Unicrow can actually provide a tangible product for people to earn reputation score through Ethos Network,
where you, for example, the top 100 Ethos people are kind of incentivized to become escrow managers and then you tear it and then
that way you kind of get into the you get into the whole idea where now you're building a
you're building on top of a reputation a social reputation that people have to kind of stake something to and now have a way to earn
more reputation by being a good actor in Unicro. So I think it's a clever little, like, because
it's probably like a plug-in for you as opposed to anything else, and you can actually get more eyes on Unicro going forward that way.
Yeah, for sure.
So we've always thought and hoped that we, at one point,
would build some sort of plug-in database list,
whatever form it would take of arbitrators that would be sort of endorsed based on certain reputation properties.
whatever form it would take,
We're not in that position, unfortunately, yet.
But it's something that we'd love to take a look at, you know, if and when we are.
Yeah, Doctor, do you have a connect to Ethos?
Unfortunately, no, I don't.
And I wish I did, because there's so much cool stuff that you can build on top of ethos,
especially, for example, Uniqro being one of their...
If they're developing their own marketplaces,
Uniqro could also be on their marketplace kind of thing.
So it's an interesting concept
because then you incentivize use of your protocol
to actually grow your own protocol by using their protocol,
if you understand what I'm trying to say.
So I wish I had the connect, but I've just sent the Twitter handle to Nate.
I'm sure someone in his network probably knows someone who knows ethos.
And then just, I think it's probably worth a conversation because I suspect,
and I know looking at their platform,
that they're looking to get more stuff to help with reputation.
And this could be a perfect fit between you guys.
And this is just like an observer observing how the space is moving.
Yeah, thank you so much. That's that's a, that's a great tip.
Yeah. Thanks for the shout. Um, so, and thanks for the question just generally.
And, uh, so with that, Tomas, we're coming up on time for both of us. Um,
what are you looking forward at and, uh, you know, what are you looking for?
How can people get involved and in what ways, uh, with Unicro? What are you looking forward at? And what are you looking for?
How can people get involved?
And in what ways with Unicro?
So I'm looking forward to these two platforms that are self-launching to really get traction and to see some real volumes and actually usage.
It'll help us obviously get a lot of feedback
and hopefully some validation.
We'll see where this AI push is going to take us.
I kind of skipped the wave of the LLMs.
I mean, obviously, I incorporated them into my life instantly.
Almost stopped using Google and bytecoding, everything, and all that.
Our foundation models in general, so even generating pictures and stuff like that.
But I just looked at it more as a consumer always.
But agents, you know, there's something much more attractive for me as a builder
because of the potential autonomy and, you know,
and them being economic actors, that attracts me.
So, you know, that's something that I want to take a look
or keep looking at and thinking about more.
And, yeah, we'll see where we are at after these things materialize.
So I guess, you know, if anyone's thinking of building anything
where transactions are supposed to take place between your users, then
please take a look, reach out, ask questions. We're happy to help. We're in close contact with HopSco,
helped us shape some things as well.
Obviously, asked us to deploy to base, which we did.
We're more than happy to deploy to any other EVM chain.
As long as there's demand, we don't
want to just go and willingly deploy everywhere.
So basically, just follow where the real demand is um we've been asked recently uh to ask on on polygon so that's
most probably going to happen very very soon um so yeah just reach out ask and uh and let us know how would you find this useful.
Right on.
Yeah, so to summarize,
if you're building anything that needs an escrow agent,
reach out to Unicro.
And I would say anything where there are real-world transactions, whether that's using real-world assets or otherwise,
reach out to Tomas.
Where can they reach you?
Is Twitter here through your main account
or through the company account, Unicro.io?
Yeah, Twitter is good.
Feel free to tag.
You can also message me.
Occasionally I check whether I have some messages
even from non-connected users.
Discord is fine as well.
Telegram, I know people like to use Telegram.
So add Thomas Ford Jackson, add my first and last name.
So, you know, all those channels are open.
Or, you know, email for those of you who still, like I do, like email,
then hello or thomasunicrow.io works fine.
Awesome.
Well, dude, thank you for meeting today
and taking the time so we can do this protocol spotlight.
I appreciate getting to catch up with you
and talk about Unicrow and how it works to spotlight it for the builders that might want to use it in the future.
And yeah, with that, thank you again to the audience as well for joining for those questions.
And looking forward to seeing everybody next week for the next edition of our Protocol Spotlight series.
Tomas, thank you a ton.
Talk to you later.
No worries. Thanks, mate. Have a good one. Thanks for doing this.
