Finalize Early
FE: the buyer releases escrow before delivery is confirmed. After FE, a missing parcel is a reputation fight, not a held balance.
Finalize early (FE) means the buyer releases escrowed payment before delivery is confirmed, handing coins directly to the vendor ahead of the normal escrow timeline.
Why it exists
From a vendor’s perspective, escrow is risk: funds can be frozen in disputes, and a market that exit scams takes everything in the pool, including payment for orders already shipped. FE shifts that risk back to the buyer, which is why markets historically granted FE status as a privilege to established, high-volume vendors rather than offering it universally.
Why it matters
FE removes the only structural leverage a buyer has. Once escrow is released early, a missing or misrepresented order becomes a reputation dispute with no held balance behind it — and accumulated FE balances are exactly what exit-scamming operators and rogue vendors harvest. The common mistake is reading an FE requirement as a trust signal; it describes where the risk sits, not how honest the counterparty is. Context: escrow systems.
Category: Markets