How a deal works
OakGavel runs on crypto rails, but you don't need to understand crypto to use it. Here is every step of a deal, in order, and the two mistakes that cost real money.
What you need first
- A wallet you control. It holds your money and it is also how you sign in; there is no account and no password here. Connecting your wallet proves who you are; it never gives us the ability to spend from it.
- Funds on Base. Base is the network every OakGavel deal settles on. A coin can exist on several networks at once, and they are not interchangeable, so being on the right one is the single thing worth double-checking.
If you're paying
01
We open the deal
Price, what's being delivered, and the acceptance criteria you and the seller already agreed on. You get a link to the deal page.
02
You fund the Safe
The deal page shows the exact amount and the exact address. Send it on the Base network. The deal starts when it lands.
03
The seller transfers the domain
They were told not to start before the money was in. When it's done, the delivery shows up on the same page, visible only to the two of you.
04
You approve, or you dispute
Approve releases the money. Dispute stops everything and sends the deal to us. Nothing moves while you're deciding.
05
You both leave a review
Reviews are attached to the wallet that did the deal, so they can't be bought or moved.
If you're getting paid
01
Don't start on a promise
Wait until the deal page says Funded. That's the moment the buyer's money stopped being something they can spend elsewhere.
02
Transfer the domain, then deliver on the page
A link and a note. Submitting the delivery is what asks the buyer to approve; a message sent by chat doesn't move the deal.
03
The buyer approves
If instead they dispute, we compare the delivery against the acceptance criteria written into the deal. That's why the criteria matter more than they look.
04
You get paid
The payout leaves the Safe as a single transfer: your full amount, since OakGavel charges no commission. It's signed by hand today, so it takes hours rather than seconds.
Who holds your money while a deal is open
Between funding and release, the money sits in a Safe multisig on Base, a contract, not a company bank account. Your deal page shows which one, and anyone can read its balance at any moment.
Moving anything out of that Safe takes two of its three keys. You hold one, the other party holds one, and OakGavel holds one, so no single party, including us, can move it alone. That is not a policy promise, it is on-chain: the Safe's owners and threshold are public, and you can check them on BaseScan before you send a cent.
OakGavel's key exists to break ties when a delivery is disputed, not to move money on its own. Every movement of any Safe is public and permanent, tied to the signing address and impossible to edit or delete, so a bad-faith signature would be a confession we couldn't undo. And there is a person on the other end of hello@oakgavel.com who answers.
That is a weaker guarantee than the one we intend to end up with, and we would rather you judge it clearly than take a slogan on faith.
The fee
OakGavel charges no commission on this deal. The buyer sends the full amount, and the seller receives every bit of it: that number is on the deal page before anyone commits to anything.
Two things that cannot be undone
Money sent to the wrong network is gone. Money sent to the wrong address is gone. Not delayed, not reversible, not recoverable by us or by anyone: that is how these rails work, and it is the honest trade for payments that no bank can hold or reprice.
So: copy the address from the deal page itself, never from an email or a chat message, and check the network before you confirm.