ICO Jury.Online

Jury.online enables users to make deals that, if any party is dissatisfied, are reviewed by a panel of jurors that deliver a judgement in favour of one of the parties. Jury.online also gives any person with expertise in a certain field the opportunity to use their experience and knowledge for paid dispute resolution.

A person willing to initiate a deal should open the website or mobile application and create a deal using one of the ready-made templates, specifying all the important details.

The deal is then placed into the blockchain as a smart contract. After the deal is accepted by the other party, it cannot be deleted or changed by anyone — even the platform administration has no control over smart contracts. In addition, the deal is assigned a link that leads to a webpage displaying information about it. The initiator sends this link to the counterparty or makes it accessible to the public if they do not yet know who is going to be the counterparty. For example, if a deal is intended for product or service delivery, but the initiator does not yet know who is going to perform it.

When creating a deal, the initiator indicates a sum they are ready to pay for the job (or want to receive, if the initiator is a contractor). This sum, converted into cryptocurrency, is sent to the balance of the smart contract, i.e. deposited. This money cannot be withdrawn until the deal is completed, regardless of whether it was successful or not and whether the parties were content with its execution or need to start legal proceedings. Part of the balance is allocated to resolving possible disputes, i.e. paying court fees (this is not the only option — fees can be paid separately).

After the counterparty confirms its consent to the terms and conditions of the deal and specifies the necessary information, the deal is considered to be concluded. 5 After that, the parties have a certain period of time to fulfil their obligations. In the event that each party is satisfied with the result, the money from the smart contract of the deal is transferred to the counterparty (or elsewhere, if specified by the deal), and the deal is considered to be successfully completed. In the event that one of the parties is not satisfied with the execution of the deal and believes that the counterparty has not fulfilled its obligations, the deal is sent to the judges for examination. Any party may initiate a dispute and send the deal to the judges, but as a rule it is the party that deposited money. When initiating a dispute, the parties have a certain period of time to set forth their arguments and comments on the issue. After that, the deal is sent to the judges.

The form of dispute resolution may vary, but usually the system chooses n random judges who receive anonymized information about the deal and make a decision by an absolute majority of votes. Judges are provided from a source called a judge pool: most simply, this is done by jury.online, but third parties specializing in a certain field may also offer dispute resolution services. The identity of judges is not known to the parties, but their competence is. Judges have a fixed period of time to make a decision. Information about the decision of a particular judge is encrypted and unavailable to other judges.

Other forms of judging are accessible: instead of several random, unknown judges, the parties may agree on a specific judge they consider fair and impartial. Most deals imply the performance of contractual obligations for a payment. In this case, one party has automatically fulfilled its obligations, as it has transferred the payment to a smart contract, so it would be the only party interested in a dispute. However, we do not want to limit the range of possible deals (for example, “service for service” or other options), so it is possible to choose who is to pay for possible litigation and when.