If-This-Then-That for Money

Every escrow, every milestone payment, every conditional release today requires either a custom smart contract per use case or a trusted intermediary. The v1 composable contract eliminates both: Lighthouse evaluates conditions, and if they hold, the protocol pulls and forwards. No escrow contract. No intermediary. No funds locked.

Pitch of the Core Idea

Traditional escrow requires custom contracts per use case or trusted intermediaries holding funds. Both are expensive, slow, and custodial. The conditional payment market underpins $2.14B in crowdfunding (2024), growing to $5.53B by 2030 at 17.6% CAGR. Kickstarter alone has facilitated $8B+ in pledges from 250K+ funded projects.

Tributary’s v1 composable contract enables conditional payments without custom contracts: Lighthouse evaluates arbitrary on-chain conditions, and if they hold, the protocol pulls and forwards. The validation CPI is the escrow logic. Supplier gets paid only when oracle confirms delivery. Trader’s stop-loss fires only when price feed confirms threshold. Contractor gets paid only when GitHub milestone is verified.

Core Mechanics

1. User configures conditional payment policies with release conditions gated by external state
2. Pre-validation (Lighthouse) — Evaluates release condition against on-chain state:
   • Oracle price within range?
   • Governance proposal passed?
   • Delivery confirmation posted?
   • Balance threshold met?
   • Time window open?
3. Pull (Token Delegation) — Only if validation passes, claims approved amount
4. Forward (CPI) — Routes to recipient or program (SPL transfer, DEX swap)

WHEN (condition: oracle confirms delivery / price target / KPI met)
  → VALIDATE (Lighthouse: assert condition holds on-chain)
  → PULL (approved amount)
  → FORWARD (transfer to supplier, or swap on DEX)

Psychological Hook and Addictiveness

“My money only moves when conditions are met.” Complete control over fund release. No trust required. No intermediary. No counterparty risk. The satisfaction of programmable money that does exactly what you told it to do, nothing more.

For suppliers: “I get paid automatically when I deliver.” No invoicing, no chasing payments, no 30-day net terms. For buyers: “I only pay when I receive.” No escrow fees, no dispute resolution overhead for the happy path.

Brief Market Research

Key Competitors:

• Kickstarter/Indiegogo: Custodial, 5-8% fee, platform-mediated disputes
• Escrow.com: Traditional escrow, 0.88-3.25% fee, custodial, slow
• Milestone-based contracts: Custom Anchor/Rust per use case, expensive to build
• Request Network: Invoicing protocol, but no conditional release logic
• Superfluid: Streaming payments, but no conditional validation

None combine oracle-validated conditions with non-custodial pull-based execution.

Business Model

• Gateway fee: 0.5-2% on each conditional payment executed
• Policy creation fee: $10-50 per conditional payment policy (one-time)
• Oracle integration fee: $100-500/mo for custom oracle connections
• Enterprise tier: $500-2,000/mo for high-volume conditional payment workflows
• Dispute resolution: $50-200 per dispute (when conditions are ambiguous)

Summary of Technical Specifications

Architecture

• Policy engine (condition definitions, release triggers)
• Lighthouse validation layer (on-chain condition evaluation)
• Oracle integration (Pyth, Switchboard, custom oracles)
• Token delegation system (pull authorization)
• Forward CPI routing (SPL transfer, DEX swap)
• Policy dashboard (condition status, payment history)

How This Hooks Into Tributary

• Milestone: Condition-based release of milestone payments
• PayAsYouGo: Continuous conditional payments (e.g., per-delivery)
• Lighthouse: Core validation primitive for condition evaluation
• Forward: CPI to recipient programs
• ComposablePolicy: Defines condition, amount, recipient, timing

Recommended Tech Stack

• Solana + Anchor
• Tributary SDK (Milestone + Lighthouse + Forward)
• Pyth/Switchboard for oracle data
• Custom Lighthouse assertions for complex conditions
• React dashboard for policy management
• Webhook system for off-chain condition triggers

MVP Scope

• Oracle-gated conditional payments (price threshold)
• Simple condition: “Pay when price > $X”
• SPL transfer to recipient
• Basic dashboard showing policy status
• Buildable in 2 days with Tributary v1 SDK + Pyth

Non-Technological Requirements

• Oracle partnerships: Pyth, Switchboard integration for reliable price feeds
• Condition specification: Need clear language for expressing conditions
• Legal framework: Conditional payments may have different legal treatment than escrow
• Dispute resolution: Need mechanism for ambiguous conditions
• Industry adoption: Supply chain partners, freelance platforms for real-world use cases

Potential Risks

• Oracle manipulation: Compromised oracle feed triggers false payments. Use decentralized oracles with staleness checks
• Condition ambiguity: Poorly-specified assertions may pass in unintended states. Assertion design is critical security surface
• Gas cost of validation: Validation CPI adds compute overhead. For micro-transactions, may be significant
• Single condition per policy: v1 supports one validation CPI per execution. Multi-condition logic must be encoded within assertion