The Problem & Solution
Challenges in DeFi
Despite DeFi's rapid growth, certain financial arrangements remain cumbersome. There is a lack of structured payment and escrow primitives – for example, businesses and projects struggle to schedule token payments or lock funds trustlessly over time.
Traditional solutions often involved:
Centralized escrow agents
Ad-hoc smart contracts
High costs and security risks
As one early DeFi founder noted, before new protocols emerged "there was no existing smart contract solution" for simple time-based token distributions or trustless escrow of funds.
Likewise, token vesting for teams and investors is typically handled off-chain or via custom contracts, which can be error-prone and non-transparent. The absence of unified, programmable financial instruments for these use cases limits DeFi's appeal for real-world business needs.
NFT Checks – A Solution
The Checks Platform bridges existing gaps by introducing programmable NFT Checks. Each check embodies a financial contract—such as payments, vesting schedules, or escrows—that is enforced by smart contract code, eliminating the need for trust in a counterparty.
In DeFi, smart contracts serve as autonomous escrow and payment agents, allowing users to trust the code rather than intermediaries. This approach ensures secure, transparent, and efficient execution of financial agreements, leveraging the trustless nature of blockchain technology.
How NFT Checks Work
NFT Checks leverage this property: funds are locked in an NFT's own account and released only according to coded conditions:
Time schedules
Milestone fulfillments
Multi-party approvals
And more
This approach greatly enhances trust and security:
Terms are verifiable on-chain
Execution is automatic
No need for lawyers or centralized escrow services
Moreover, the platform integrates AI oracle services to verify real-world conditions (for example, using an optimistic oracle to confirm that a milestone is met before releasing escrowed funds).
By combining programmability, verifiability, and automation, NFT Checks create a powerful framework for decentralized financial agreements that directly solves the pain points of:
Unmanaged vesting
Unstructured payments
Lack of trust in P2P deals
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