Vaultion-assisted arbitration
When a deal goes wrong and Kleros isn’t available on your network, a Vaultion reviewer settles it. A person reads both sides, weighs the evidence against the terms you agreed, and decides who the escrow pays out to.
This path is not decentralized
On this path you are trusting Vaultion’s reviewers to rule fairly. There are no independent jurors and no stake at risk behind the decision — just a human reading the evidence. The safeguards below exist to limit what that human can do, not to remove the trust entirely. If you don’t want to trust our judgment, use Kleros on Ethereum instead.
How it works
Either party opens a dispute
Buyer or seller can raise a dispute from the escrow page while the deal is still open. The escrow stops moving; nothing can be released until the dispute is settled.
Both sides submit evidence
Each party writes their side and can attach files — photos, receipts, tracking, chat logs. Evidence is private and stored encrypted: only the two parties and the Vaultion reviewer can see the case, only the reviewer can open the files, and nothing is published. Every submission is wallet-signed and fingerprinted, so neither side can quietly change it later.
A Vaultion reviewer rules
A human reviewer reads the deal terms agreed at creation and every piece of evidence, then submits one of three rulings: release to the seller, refund to the buyer, or split the amount between them.
A challenge window opens
The ruling does not take effect immediately. A challenge window — set when the escrow was created — runs first, so a mistaken or disputed ruling can be caught before any money moves.
The escrow is finalized
Once the window closes, the resolution is finalized on-chain. Finalizing credits the winning party inside the contract — they then collect the funds themselves. Vaultion never moves your money for you.
What limits the reviewer
A guardian that can only pause
A separate guardian key can freeze a ruling during the challenge window, pausing it so a bad decision can be caught before funds move. The guardian can pause a ruling but can never redirect funds — it cannot change who wins, and it cannot pay itself. The reviewer who rules and the guardian who can freeze are deliberately separate keys.
The contract still holds the money
Vaultion never custodies your funds. They sit in the escrow contract from deposit to payout. A ruling only tells the contract which party it may pay — the winner withdraws the funds themselves. There is no step where the money passes through Vaultion.
Fee-less
There is no arbitration fee on this path. Opening a dispute costs you nothing beyond the network’s own transaction fee. Nobody is being paid to rule on your case.
AI prepares, a human decides
AI is used only to prepare the case — summarising the submissions and laying out the timeline for the reviewer. It does not rule. Every ruling is read, decided and signed by a human reviewer. This is AI-assisted case preparation, not AI arbitration.
Which should you pick? If your escrow is on Ethereum and the amount matters to you, Kleros is the stronger choice — nobody, including us, can overturn its jurors. Vaultion-assisted exists so that escrows on networks without Kleros still have a way to settle a disagreement.
