Escrow V1

Kleros Escrow V1 documentation: decentralized escrow smart contract on Ethereum Mainnet with Kleros Court dispute resolution and ERC-20 token support.

Escrow V1

Escrow V1 is production-proven on Ethereum L1 and remains active for web3 integrations. A V2 version is available: Escrow V2 on Arbitrum.

Kleros Escrow V1 is the original decentralized escrow platform on Ethereum Mainnet. It allowed two parties to lock funds in a smart contract, with Kleros Court available as a dispute resolution mechanism if the parties disagreed.

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Token support

Non-standard ERC-20 tokens are not supported. Tokens such as USDT, BNB, and OMG are not compatible with Kleros Escrow V1. These tokens use non-standard transfer implementations that may cause transactions to fail or funds to become stuck.

Escrow V1 only supports ETH and standard ERC-20 tokens. Non-standard tokens typically have one or more of the following characteristics:

• No return value on transfer/transferFrom (e.g., USDT, BNB, OMG)
• Fee-on-transfer mechanisms that reduce the received amount
• Rebasing supply adjustments
• Pausable transfers that can be frozen by an admin

Non-standard tokens are supported on Escrow V2, which includes SafeERC20 handling and automatic safety checks for broader token compatibility.

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Key differences from V2

Feature	V1	V2
Network	Ethereum Mainnet	Arbitrum One
Token Support	ETH only	ETH + any ERC-20 token
Non-standard ERC-20	Not supported	Supported via SafeERC20
Settlement	Basic	Structured proposal/counter-proposal
Platform Fees	None	None
Evidence/Appeals	Handled by escrow contract	Handled by Court

V2 introduced structured settlement negotiation, multi-token support, and moved evidence and appeal handling to the Court, simplifying the escrow contract. See Escrow V2 for current documentation.