>is able to safely handle your money in escrow, which is what you'd require otherwise
Except you're not since no one tries to be their own bank they have their bank to safely handle the money for them. As an escrow agent I have Alice send money to me and I choose to send it to Bob or back to Alice but at no point in that am I typically holding actual cash. They are funds in my bank account which I trust to manage funds.
>For example a mediator who offers to mediate mail order sales could publish the evidence they will use to resolve the dispute, and the act of making a payment involving them would involve effectively signing a contract with them (obviously you try and set up the software and contracts such that it's pretty standardised and all done with one or two mouse clicks). Now the mediator has to produce not just a decision but also the rationale for how they arrived at that decision. If they can't do that, the mediator will quickly gain a reputation as being unreliable and to be avoided.
This doesn't remove the problem of a malicious 3rd party though. I could say "I arrived at the decision by inspecting the box from Alice and seeing the product before sending it to Bob". I have my process, I inspect the box and make sure the products in it match the order. But I am still capable of lying to you. Bitcoin still hasn't solved that problem and hasn't actually improved on the existing trust protocol.
>these techniques are quite advanced and nobody is using them today.
There is also an extremely limited range of contracts which could be solved by this type of system and none of them that I can think of that people do today.
Except you're not since no one tries to be their own bank they have their bank to safely handle the money for them. As an escrow agent I have Alice send money to me and I choose to send it to Bob or back to Alice but at no point in that am I typically holding actual cash. They are funds in my bank account which I trust to manage funds.
>For example a mediator who offers to mediate mail order sales could publish the evidence they will use to resolve the dispute, and the act of making a payment involving them would involve effectively signing a contract with them (obviously you try and set up the software and contracts such that it's pretty standardised and all done with one or two mouse clicks). Now the mediator has to produce not just a decision but also the rationale for how they arrived at that decision. If they can't do that, the mediator will quickly gain a reputation as being unreliable and to be avoided.
This doesn't remove the problem of a malicious 3rd party though. I could say "I arrived at the decision by inspecting the box from Alice and seeing the product before sending it to Bob". I have my process, I inspect the box and make sure the products in it match the order. But I am still capable of lying to you. Bitcoin still hasn't solved that problem and hasn't actually improved on the existing trust protocol.
>these techniques are quite advanced and nobody is using them today.
There is also an extremely limited range of contracts which could be solved by this type of system and none of them that I can think of that people do today.