How Escrow Works

1. The Short Version

• Organizers deposit 100% of the prize pool before their hackathon can go live. No deposit, no hackathon.
• Once the money is in, the hackathon earns the Prize Verified badge, so developers know the prize exists before they start building.
• Winners get 50% the moment results are announced and the other 50% when the organizer confirms the project milestone. Some prizes pay in full on the day.
• HackVillage's 5% platform fee is paid by the organizer on top of the pool. Winners receive every shilling of the announced prize.

2. Who Holds The Money

Deposits are collected and held through Paystack, our licensed payment provider, and payouts are sent from that balance straight to winners. After an organizer deposits, the prize money never passes back through their hands.

Every step is also recorded on a public blockchain (Polygon) by our PrizeVault contract. The contract doesn't hold money. It keeps a tamper-proof record of when a pool was locked and when each payout was made, so anyone can check the history against the payment provider's receipts.

3. Step 1: Verify Your Organization

Before an organization's first deposit, an owner or admin requests business verification (KYB) from the prize vault page. The HackVillage team reviews it, usually within 48 hours, and every decision is written to our audit log. Deposits stay closed until verification is approved, and verified organizers show a Verified Organizer badge on their hackathons.

4. Step 2: Declare The Prize Pool

When you create a hackathon, you set a prize for each place. The prize pool is the sum of those prizes, in Kenyan shillings, with a minimum of KES 10,000. For each prize you also choose whether the second half depends on a milestone (the default) or whether the whole prize pays out on the day.

5. Step 3: Fund 100% Of The Pool

Publishing a hackathon puts it into Pending Deposit. From the prize vault page, an organization owner or admin pays the full remaining pool plus the 5% platform fee in one Paystack checkout. For example, a KES 500,000 pool is a KES 525,000 checkout. The fee is kept separate and never reduces the prizes.

A checkout that isn't completed expires after 24 hours, and we email you so you can start a new one.

6. Step 4: The Vault Locks And The Hackathon Goes Live

As soon as Paystack confirms the payment and the deposit covers the full pool, three things happen together: the vault locks, the hackathon goes live, and the Prize Verified badge appears on its page. The blockchain record of the lock follows right after. Registered developers are notified that the prize is secured.

7. Step 5: Winners Are Paid On The Day

Before results can be announced, each winning team leader adds a payout method: an M-Pesa number or a bank account. When the organizer announces the winners, the first payout is queued for every winning team immediately.

• Prizes with a milestone pay 50% now. Prizes without one pay 100% now.
• Our target is for more than 90% of these payouts to reach winners within one hour of the announcement.
• The prize goes to the team leader. When a team submits its project, it declares how the prize is split between members. That split is part of the record, and the team settles it among themselves.

8. Step 6: The Milestone Releases The Rest

The second half of a prize is released when the organizer confirms the winning team's milestone, which is due 30 days after the winners are announced. Organizers get reminders while a milestone is overdue.

If a milestone confirmation doesn't come, the winner can open a dispute from their winnings page after 14 days. The HackVillage team reviews it, and if the milestone was met, releases the final payout through the same path as every other payout. The money stays locked in escrow while the dispute is open.

9. When Something Goes Wrong

• A payout fails: we retry it automatically, then hand it to the HackVillage team for manual review. The money stays in escrow until a payout is confirmed as paid.
• No double records: each half of each prize has exactly one payout record, so a retry resends that same payout instead of creating a new one.
• Nightly checks: every night we compare our records against the ledger and flag anything that doesn't match to the team.

10. Cancellations And Refunds

If you need to cancel a hackathon before it goes live, email us at info@hackvillage.xyz. We'll refund what you deposited, including the platform fee. Once a hackathon is live, its prize pool is committed to the developers taking part.

11. What Is Public

The blockchain record shows each hackathon and the shilling amounts locked and paid out. Payment references and winner handles are stored there only as scrambled fingerprints (hashes), so they can be checked without being exposed. Organizers see their full deposit and payout history on their prize vault page.

Each organizer also carries a public trust score, which starts at 100. For example, missing the 48-hour standard for delivering hackathon photos costs 10 points. Read more in our Privacy Policy.

12. A Note On Our Pilot

HackVillage is in its pilot. Until our live payment keys and the audited blockchain contract are switched on, deposits, payouts and blockchain records run in test mode. Everything described on this page works the same way in test mode, without real money moving.

13. Frequently Asked Questions

14. More Questions

Ask us anything about escrow or payouts at info@hackvillage.xyz, or see our Terms of Service.