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How it works
Minting is not instant — and the wait is Steam's, not ours
When you deposit a skin, Steam applies its own holding period to the trade before the item is fully settled with the receiving account. That is about seven days from the moment the trade completes, and longer if either account has a trade hold on it.
No token exists during that window. Nothing on LootFi's side shortens it, because nothing on LootFi's side controls it — it is enforced by Valve, on Valve's schedule. If you need the skin liquid today, do not deposit it.
Worse, during most of that window the item is in neither your inventory nor the custody account's, which is alarming the first time you see it and is completely normal. Track your deposit explains what you should be seeing at each point.
The loop
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ 1. DEPOSIT 2. HOLD 3. MINT │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │
│ │ you accept│ │ Steam's │ │ ERC-721 │ │
│ │ one trade │─────────►│ trade │────────►│ mints to │ │
│ │ offer │ │ protection│ │your wallet│ │
│ └───────────┘ │ ~7 days │ └─────┬─────┘ │
│ │ └───────────┘ │ │
│ │ skin leaves your inventory │ │
│ ▼ ▼ │
│ ╔═════════════════════════════════════╗ ┌───────────┐ │
│ ║ CUSTODY (Steam) ║ │ 4. HOLD │ │
│ ║ the physical asset lives here ║ │ or TRADE │ │
│ ║ for as long as a token backs it ║ └─────┬─────┘ │
│ ╚═════════════════════════════════════╝ │ │
│ ▲ │ │
│ │ 5. SELL │ (signature, │
│ │ │ no gas) │
│ │ ▼ │
│ │ ┌───────────┐ │
│ │ │ buyer's │ │
│ │ │ wallet │ │
│ │ └─────┬─────┘ │
│ │ │ │
│ │ 6. WITHDRAW: burn the token │ │
│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ the same physical asset is traded back │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘1 · Deposit
You pick one or more tradable CS2 items and a single Steam trade offer arrives from a custody account, requesting exactly those items. You accept it in Steam. The offer requests your items — you are never asked to send items first and nothing is ever asked of you outside Steam's own trade UI.
One offer is one batch, and every item in it shares a receipt time. See Deposit a skin.
2 · Hold
Once you accept, Steam records the trade and starts its clock. The waiting period is the longest of the applicable holds, not their sum — Steam's ~7-day trade protection, an escrow hold if one applies to your account, and a recent-authenticator hold on the receiving side if one applies. Whichever is longest is the one you wait out. See Hold calculation and Escrow & holds.
Throughout this window the protocol watches Steam's trade record — not inventory contents — to confirm the trade is still standing. A trade that gets reversed never mints. See Trade reversals.
3 · Mint
When the hold clears, the deposit is re-verified from scratch against Steam's live state, a token id is allocated, and LootSkins mints the ERC-721 to the wallet you linked. You pay nothing and sign nothing for this step; the mint transaction is sent and paid for by the protocol.
The re-verification is deliberately paranoid: if the item cannot be confirmed to be in custody at the moment of minting, the deposit parks for review rather than minting a token nothing backs. See Minting.
4 · Hold or trade
The token is now ordinary on-chain property. Transfer it, hold it, or list it. Whoever holds the token holds the redemption right — there is no separate registry of "who really owns this skin", and no way to move the redemption right apart from the token.
5 · Sell
Listing is an off-chain signature, not a transaction. You sign an EIP-712 order stating token, price, expiry, and nonce. Your token does not move and no contract takes custody of it. When a buyer fills the order, payment splits and the token transfers directly from you to them, atomically, in the buyer's single transaction.
The one-time exception: before your first listing you grant the marketplace contract approval to move your tokens, and that grant is a transaction that costs gas. See List & sell.
6 · Withdraw
Burn the token by calling deTokenize and the underlying skin is traded back to your Steam account. The protocol runs a preflight first — confirming you are the on-chain owner, the token is not listed, and custody actually holds the item — before the burn is enabled, so you cannot destroy a token that could not be honoured.
After the burn, a trade offer is sent to your saved trade URL. You must accept it in Steam; the item does not appear on its own. See Withdraw your skin.
On-chain vs off-chain
Being precise about this matters, because it determines what you can verify independently and what you are trusting an operator for.
| Where it happens | Can you verify it yourself? | |
|---|---|---|
| Minting a token | On-chain — LootSkins.mint | Yes. Read ownerOf on the explorer. |
| Transfers | On-chain — ERC-721 Transfer | Yes. |
| Sale settlement | On-chain — LootMarket.fulfillOrder | Yes. Payment split and token transfer are in one transaction. |
| Burning to redeem | On-chain — LootSkins.deTokenize | Yes. Detokenized is a public event. |
| Fees and royalty rates | On-chain — contract storage | Yes. See Fees. |
| Custody of the skin | Off-chain — a Steam account | No. This is the trust assumption. |
| Which asset backs which token | Off-chain — the fingerprint record | No. |
| Order signatures (listings) | Off-chain until filled | Partly — a signature is only meaningful once someone submits it on-chain. |
| Float, paint seed, sticker data | Off-chain — third-party lookups | No, and coverage is incomplete. See Reference prices and Metadata. |
| Reference prices | Off-chain — third-party data | No. They are informational only. |
The short version: everything about the token is verifiable, and everything about the skin is not. That asymmetry is the protocol's central trust assumption, and Trust & security states it without hedging.
What you sign vs what you send
A signature costs nothing, moves nothing, and can be produced offline. A transaction costs gas and changes chain state. LootFi asks for both, and never uses one where the other would do.
Signatures (free, no gas, no transaction):
- Wallet link — a plain-text message proving you control the address. It authorizes no transfer and grants no allowance.
- Listing an item — an EIP-712
Order. It authorizes one specific sale of one specific token at one price, and only until its expiry. It moves nothing by itself.
Transactions (you send them, you pay gas):
- Marketplace approval — one-time
setApprovalForAll, so a fill can move the token at the moment of sale. - Buying —
fulfillOrder, with the price attached as native ETH. - Cancelling a listing —
cancelfor one order, orsetMinimumNonceto invalidate many at once. - Withdrawing —
deTokenize, which burns the token.
Sent by the protocol, not by you: the mint. You never pay for or sign the transaction that creates your token.
Nothing ever asks for a seed phrase or a Steam password
LootFi signs you in through Steam's own OpenID page, which never reveals your password to us, and links your wallet with a message signature. Any page or person asking for a seed phrase, a Steam password, an API key, or a mobile authenticator secret is not us. See Getting started.
Next
- Core concepts — the terms used on every other page.
- Getting started — set up an account and deposit.
- Deposit lifecycle — the state machine in full.