Blip Money: Non-Custodial Settlement Infrastructure for Modern P2P Payments

Peer-to-peer payment systems have expanded rapidly, but the infrastructure supporting them often remains rooted in trust-based enforcement and centralized custody. These models introduce settlement risk, execution delays, and operational complexity that scale poorly as transaction volume grows.

blip money addresses these limitations by providing a non-custodial settlement protocol enforced directly on-chain. Rather than relying on institutional trust or discretionary intervention, settlement outcomes are governed by deterministic protocol logic.

Protocol Infrastructure, Not a Payment Service

blip money operates as settlement infrastructure, not a consumer-facing payment platform.

The protocol does not:

Hold user funds

Manage user accounts

Intervene manually in transactions

Instead, it defines explicit rules that determine how funds are locked, released, or refunded once a transaction begins. Settlement behavior is predictable, transparent, and enforced entirely at the protocol level.

Non-Custodial Escrow Framework

Settlement within blip money is secured through protocol-controlled smart contract escrow:

User funds are deposited into on-chain escrow contracts

Escrow accounts have no private keys and cannot be accessed externally

Funds move only through predefined protocol state transitions

This structure removes discretionary control from all parties and ensures that settlement execution is verifiable and transparent.

Merchant Accountability Through Economic Guarantees

Merchants participate as bonded settlement providers, operating under enforced economic constraints:

A bond must be staked before accepting transactions

Transaction size is capped relative to the bonded amount

Failure to complete settlement can trigger automatic penalties or slashing

This model replaces trust with capital-backed accountability, ensuring that settlement obligations are enforceable rather than aspirational.

On-Chain Reputation Enforcement

blip money embeds reputation directly into protocol logic:

Settlement outcomes update reputation automatically

Reputation cannot be reset, hidden, or manipulated

Reliable merchants gain improved access to future transaction volume

Reputation becomes an objective economic signal derived from on-chain behavior, not a subjective rating system.

Competitive Fee Discovery

Transaction fees are determined through open market competition:

Merchants submit bids to fulfill settlement orders

Bids are evaluated using price and protocol-defined metrics

Second-price auction logic encourages honest pricing

This approach ensures efficient fee discovery without centralized pricing control or negotiated intermediaries

blip money provides a reliable foundation for scalable peer-to-peer settlement systems—without custody, discretion, or centralized control.