I Built a Crypto-Native Craigslist with Manual Escrow — Here's Why and How

The Problem There are millions of people holding crypto who want to spend it on real things — hire a developer, buy a script, sell design work. But where do they go? Telegram OTC chats → chaotic, no protection, scam-heavy Forum classifieds → threads get buried in hours P2P exchange sections → designed for fiat conversion, not commerce I decided to build a dedicated marketplace for this. What I Built CryptoBoard — a classifieds platform with Web3 wallet authentication. 🔗 https://crypto.my-board.org/ Tech decisions: Auth : Wallet-only (MetaMask, Trust Wallet, WalletConnect). No backend user database with emails and passwords to get hacked. Listings : Icon-based instead of user-uploaded images. Keeps the UI clean and avoids the "flea market" look. Messaging : Built-in chat between buyers and sellers. Escrow : This is the interesting part (see below). The Escrow Problem with Digital Goods Traditional escrow works like this: Buyer sends money to escrow Seller delivers product Buyer confirms → escrow releases money But with digital goods (source code, design files), step 3 is broken: The buyer can receive the files, say "this isn't what I wanted," request a refund, and keep a copy The seller has no recourse The escrow service has no way to verify the claim My Solution: Human-Powered Escrow Instead of just holding funds, the platform admin becomes an active verifier: Seller sends product + testing instructions to admin Admin installs/runs the product on their own machine Admin performs agreed-upon tests and records a screencast Buyer watches the screencast — verified by a neutral party, not the seller If satisfied, buyer sends crypto directly to seller Admin verifies the on-chain transaction Admin delivers files to buyer Admin deletes all copies (per agreement) Is it scalable? Probably not infinitely. But for high-value digital transactions ($100–$10,000+), having a human in the loop is actually a feature, not a bug. Design Philosophy I deliberately chose not to allow user