In Telegram and Discord deal groups someone always offers to be the guarantor (in Spanish "garante", in Russian "гарант"): a trusted member who holds the money while the two parties exchange. The pitch is that the guarantor has reputation. The problem is structural: a guarantor is a person who can receive both sides and leave, and the groups where this happens are the same groups that get cloned, with the same usernames, by the people who do exactly that.
Guarantor versus escrow, point by point
Who holds the money
Guarantor: a person, in their own wallet. Escrow: a platform, in addresses neither party controls, under a record of the trade.
What stops them from leaving
Guarantor: reputation, which a clone account copies in a minute. Escrow: the funds are not in anyone’s pocket to leave with.
Who decides a dispute
Guarantor: the same person holding the money. Escrow: an arbiter who does not hold the funds, with the reason in writing.
Identity
Guarantor: a username. Escrow: the owner’s name fixed by the platform on every payment account, identity verification, and both parties’ ID documents in a dispute.
Where the deal lives
Guarantor: in a chat that can be deleted. Escrow: in a trade record with states, windows and evidence.
The tells of a fake guarantor or fake escrow
- They contact you first, by DM, after you posted in a group.
- They are an "admin" of a group that looks like the official one. Check the official list; iEscrow’s is in Official channels.
- They send you a link to an escrow site. Never follow it: type the domain yourself.
- They ask for a "release fee", "gas fee" or "insurance" before you get your money. A real escrow never asks you to pay to get your own funds.
The move that ends most of these conversations: "Let’s do it on iescrow.io: you lock the crypto, I pay, it releases when you confirm." Someone who refuses a mechanism and insists on a person has told you everything.