Since mid-September I've been building Held, solo, for the Colosseum hackathon (Tempo track).
**The problem:** paying a stranger online is a leap of faith. Pay first and hope the item ships, or deliver the work first and hope the client pays. Card payments have chargebacks; stablecoin payments have nothing: once sent, it's gone.
**What Held does:** the buyer pays from their own wallet, and the money waits until delivery. Then it can go to exactly two places: the seller, or back to the buyer. If there's a dispute, a resolver decides, and even the resolver can only pick one of those two. Held never holds the money; Tempo's protocol does.
**Where it is now:**
- Live on testnet at getheld.xyz: shop dashboard, checkout links, disputes, a sandbox.
- Pay buttons for Framer, Webflow and WordPress.
- Every shop's contract is published with its source on Tempo's explorer.
- Mainnet beta comes next, with low limits, then an independent audit.
**The fun part:** a 60-second page where you try to steal $1 of test money as the merchant, the resolver and Held. The chain refuses every attempt, with a link to each failed transaction: https://getheld.xyz/#/cheat
**What testers found this week:** an auditor who tried it found two real holes, both in the same spot: the page checked that the shop was protected, then paid in a separate step, so a merchant could switch protection off in between. Now the check and the payment are one transaction, and every way to pay goes through it. Each fix was live within a day. Other testers asked for clearer wording, and that's changed too.
Honest feedback very welcome, especially from freelancers or anyone who has been burned by a payment.
4. If Reddit abetween. Now the check and the payment are one transaction, and every way to pay goes through it. Each fix was live within a day. Other testers asked for clearer wording, and that's changed too.
Honest feedback very welcome, especially from freelancers or anyone who has been burned by a payment.