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Escrow & holds ​

Trade protection is the baseline every deposit waits out. Escrow is the extra hold Steam adds when one of the two accounts in a trade is not fully trusted yet. When it applies, it is the reason a deposit takes up to fifteen days instead of about seven.

Escrow is entirely Steam's. Its length is set by Steam, reported by Steam on the trade offer, and cannot be shortened by LootFi, by a support request, or by paying anything.

When escrow applies ​

Steam puts a trade into escrow when either side of it has a hold. It does not matter which side — a hold on the sender or on the receiver delays the same trade by the same amount.

The most common causes on a depositor's account:

  • No Steam Guard mobile authenticator. Steam holds trades from accounts without one.
  • The authenticator was added, or moved to a new device, in the last 7 days. This is the 15-day hold described below, and it catches a lot of people who have just replaced a phone.
  • A recent password or email change, which temporarily restricts trading.

Steam reports the resulting hold as a number of days attached to the offer.

The protocol takes the larger of the two sides ​

A trade has two accounts and Steam reports a hold figure for each. The protocol reads both and uses the larger one.

  Steam reports on the offer:
      your side ......... 0 days
      custody side ...... 15 days
                          ------
      applied ........... 15 days   <- the larger, never the smaller, never the sum

Taking the smaller would mean minting before the item is actually free to move, which is the one direction that is unsafe. Taking the larger means the protocol occasionally waits longer than strictly necessary, which costs patience and nothing else.

Day counts are also rounded up. If Steam says a hold ends in 7 days and 2 hours, the protocol treats it as 8 days. Same reasoning: a hold is never understated.

Escrow days are re-read from the accepted offer, and can only grow ​

Steam's answer at the moment an offer is created is not always its answer once the offer is accepted. The authoritative figure lives on the accepted offer, because that is the trade Steam actually executed.

So the protocol re-reads the escrow figure at acceptance and combines it with whatever it recorded earlier by taking the maximum:

  at offer creation   Steam says .... 0 days   (best effort, may be unavailable)
  at acceptance       Steam says .... 8 days   (authoritative)
                                      ------
  stored on the deposit ............. 8 days   max(0, 8)

A hold can only ever grow, never shrink. An early estimate cannot shorten a real hold Steam reported later, and a later read that comes back empty (because Steam was unreachable, say) cannot erase a hold that was already recorded. This is deliberate and asymmetric: an inflated hold delays a mint, a deflated one would mint against an item still locked.

What this means in practice

If the site showed you "about 7 days" when you deposited and the unlock time later moves out, that is Steam's authoritative escrow figure arriving. It is not a change of policy on our side.

The 15-day recent-authenticator hold ​

This is the hold that catches people out, because nothing about it is obviously connected to the trade they just made.

If the Steam Guard mobile authenticator on an account was added recently, or moved to a new device recently, Steam holds that account's trades for 15 days. The clock is Steam's, it starts when the authenticator was set up, and it applies to everything the account trades until it expires.

Two consequences worth knowing:

  • Replacing your phone shortly before depositing will turn a ~7-day deposit into a 15-day one, even though nothing about the item or the trade changed.
  • The hold is per account. It can apply to the custody side too, and the protocol accounts for that the same way — by taking the larger figure.

Wait a week after setting up a new authenticator

Have the mobile authenticator active for more than 7 days before you deposit. That single step removes the most common source of a 15-day wait.

Holds run concurrently ​

Escrow does not stack on top of trade protection. Both windows start at the same receipt time and run in parallel, so the wait is the longest one:

  receipt
    |
    |==== trade protection  ~7 days ====|
    |==== escrow  (Steam's figure, up to 15 days) ==========|
    |==== recent-authenticator hold  15 days ===============|
    |                                                       |
    +-------------------------------------------------------> unlock
                                                              (the longest bar)

A deposit with a 15-day escrow waits 15 days, not 22. The full arithmetic, including the safety margin applied after the unlock, is in Hold calculation.

One deliberate conservatism: the protocol measures escrow from the receipt time, even though Steam's escrow actually delays receipt itself. That can only make the computed unlock later than reality, never earlier.

What LootFi does not control ​

QuestionAnswer
Can you shorten my escrow?No. Steam sets it and Steam enforces it.
Can you mint before the hold ends?No. The item is not ours to tokenize until it can actually move.
Does a bigger deposit clear faster?No. Holds are per account and per trade, not per value.
Does the fee change anything?No. There is no fee that affects a hold.
Can support at LootFi override it?No. Nobody at LootFi can change a Steam hold.

If your account triggers escrow, no setting anywhere in this protocol shortens it. The only real fix is on your Steam account: have the mobile authenticator active for more than seven days, and avoid depositing immediately after a password, email, or device change.

LootFi is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Valve Corporation. Counter-Strike and Steam are trademarks of Valve Corporation.

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