Horkos

Horkos is Scriptum’s escrow mechanism for high-trust trades — fiat-for-Scriptum, physical goods, services rendered, or any settlement where one side of the transaction exists off-chain.

The structure is three-party:
A commits Scriptum to a protocol-controlled escrow address.
B delivers the off-chain side.
C — the attestor — verifies that delivery occurred and signs the outcome.

The chain enforces what the parties agreed.

Horkos takes its name from Hórkos, the personification of sworn oath in Hesiod’s Works and Days, punisher of perjurers. Each Horkos contract is a sworn agreement with cryptographic consequences for breach.

Party B’s stake — at minimum 0.1% of the principal — is the skin in the game. The attestor’s verdict determines the outcome of that stake.

The chain is the registrar, not the arbiter.
A and B choose the terms.
The attestor is theirs to select.
The chain enforces structural floors and procedural rules, then executes the agreed resolution.

No party — not the trade participants, not the attestor, not the Foundation, not Curia — can divert escrowed funds.
The protocol is the custody.

Where Horkos lives

Horkos is a chain primitive.
The user-facing experience lives inside Aurum — wallet flows for committing Scriptum, monitoring the contract, viewing attestation outcomes, and receiving released funds.

From the holder’s perspective, Horkos appears as a trade workflow inside the wallet.
From the chain’s perspective, it is a multi-stage state machine with deterministic resolution.

Use cases

• OTC trades — large Scriptum-for-fiat purchases settled bilaterally
• Cross-asset trades through Aurum Market
• Delivery-versus-payment for physical goods or property
• Service agreements with cryptographic settlement enforcement
• Any settlement where parties prefer protocol custody over custodial intermediaries

Status

Horkos is specified in the whitepaper.
Implementation will land as Scriptum approaches Genesis.
The Aurum interface will guide holders through each stage of the process.