How your money is protected

What MM can and can't do with your money, and how you get it back if MM goes offline.

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USDC deals: MM never holds the money

When a buyer pays in USDC, the money goes into a public escrow contract on the Base network, not into an account MM owns. The contract was built by Coinbase and audited by Spearbit and Coinbase Protocol Security. It is at 0xf968…B19c, and anyone can read its code.

The contract lets MM do exactly two things with the money in a deal:

• pay the seller, at the address written into the buyer's payment, or
• send it back to the buyer.

MM can't send it anywhere else. Its fee is capped at the rate the buyer signed and goes to an address that is also fixed in the payment. MM never sees your wallet keys.

If MM goes offline, the buyer takes the money back alone

Every USDC payment has a date written into the contract: the end of the delivery, inspection and dispute time, plus two days. The deal page shows it as "the buyer can pull it back alone after…". After that date the contract lets the buyer, and only the buyer, take back anything still in escrow, with no help from MM.

• While the deal is open, keep your receipt: "Download receipt" on the deal page. It holds the exact transaction for taking the money back.
• After the date, if MM is still up, press "Reclaim with my wallet" on the deal page.
• If the site is gone, send the receipt's reclaim transaction from the same wallet you paid with. It goes to the escrow contract above. Any wallet that can send a custom transaction can do it, and so can anyone you ask for help: they can't redirect the money, because the contract only returns it to the wallet that paid.

Card and bank deals: MM does hold the money

Card and bank payments can't go into a smart contract, so here you rely on MM and on Stripe:

• The money sits in the Stripe account of Persist Ventures, the company that runs MM, tracked deal by deal.
• MM keeps it out of the company's own payouts until the deal is done.
• MM pays the seller only through Stripe, to a payout account Stripe has verified, and refunds the buyer to the card or bank account they paid from.
• If MM goes offline, the money is still in Stripe and Persist Ventures can pay or refund it from there. Write to support@escrowmcp.org.
• Card payers also keep the usual right to dispute a charge with their card's bank.

Who decides when there's a problem

If the buyer raises a problem in time, both sides add evidence and a panel of AI models from different companies decides how the held money is split. MM uses the middle answer. Either side can appeal once to a larger panel. A ruling can only move money between the buyer and the seller of that deal.

Limits right now

• The smallest deal is $5 in USDC and $10 by card or bank.
• Real-money deals start small. The biggest deal allowed rises as real deals finish cleanly.
• A single card payment can be up to $5,000; larger card or bank deals are paid by bank transfer.

A record nobody can quietly change

Every step of every deal goes into a history where each entry carries a fingerprint of the one before, so an edit anywhere breaks everything after it. Both sides can download it from the deal page. Finished real-money deals are listed, without names, on the public record.

What can still go wrong

• MM's own software can have bugs. For USDC deals the contract still limits what a bug could do: money can only go to the seller or back to the buyer.
• An audit lowers the risk of a contract bug but doesn't remove it.
• USDC is issued by Circle; a deal in USDC depends on USDC keeping its value.
• A panel ruling can be wrong. Clear terms and a check MM can run itself make that less likely.
• Anyone with your private deal link can act for you. Keep it like a password.