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Trade reversals
Steam can undo a trade. Inside the protection window, Steam Support can roll a trade back and return the items to where they came from — and a rollback on one account can unwind other protected trades on that same account at the same time.
This is the reason a deposit does not mint the moment it is received. It is also the one situation where a depositor can destroy their own deposit by accident.
Do not initiate a reversal on a deposit you intend to keep
If you ask Steam Support to reverse the trade that moved your skin into custody, Steam will take the item back. The deposit ends, nothing mints, and the reversal may also unwind other protected trades on your account — including deposits you did want to keep.
There is no way for LootFi to decline a Steam-side reversal or to undo one.
What the protocol does when it sees a reversal signal
A reversal is treated as an account-level event, not an item-level one, because that is how Steam applies it.
any reversal signal for a Steam account
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v
pause EVERY open deposit on that account
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v
re-read Steam's trade record for each one
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+----------+-----------------------------------------+
| | |
v v v
rollback completed, rollback started but the trade still
item is back with did not complete, or stands
the depositor the record is ambiguous
| | |
v v v
deposit ends as held for human review countdown resumes
Reversed; — never auto-resolved from where it was
nothing mints in either directionThree properties of that flow matter:
Pausing is immediate and account-wide. One reversal signal freezes every open deposit belonging to that Steam account, not just the deposit that triggered it. Steam's rollback can reach all of them, so the protocol assumes it might have.
Nothing mints out of a paused state. A paused deposit must pass a fresh custody verification against Steam before it can resume its countdown, and it cannot reach the mint gate while it is paused.
Ambiguity is never resolved automatically. Steam has trade statuses that mean "a rollback was attempted and did not finish". In those cases the item is usually still in custody, but "usually" is not good enough to either mint a token or destroy a deposit. Those deposits stop and wait for a person to look at them. Over-holding costs a depositor time; guessing wrong in either direction is unrecoverable.
Why the trade record is the source of truth, not inventory presence
The obvious custody check — "does the custody account currently hold this item?" — is wrong on Steam, and dangerously so.
During the protection window the item is in neither inventory: it has left the depositor and has not landed in custody. So an inventory check answers no for every perfectly healthy deposit for about a week. A protocol that read that as a reversal would mark good deposits as failed seconds after they succeeded, and would keep doing it for the entire window.
Steam's trade record does not have that problem. It is readable throughout the window, it states whether the trade completed or was rolled back, and it is the same record Steam itself acts on. So:
| Signal | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| Item not in the custody inventory, during the window | Normal. This is what protection looks like. |
| Item not in the custody inventory, after the window | Worth investigating — the deposit is verified again before anything proceeds. |
| Trade record says the trade was rolled back | The item genuinely came back off us. Deposit ends as Reversed. |
| Trade record says a rollback failed or was abandoned | Ambiguous. Held for review, never auto-resolved. |
| Trade record says the trade stands | The deposit is healthy, wherever the item appears to be. |
The same principle is applied throughout the deposit path — see Custody model and Deposit lifecycle.
Timing: why the wait is also the defence
Reversals live inside Steam's protection window. The mint gate opens only after that window has fully elapsed, plus a safety margin, plus a fresh custody check.
receipt protection window mint gate
|=========== reversals are possible in here ===========| |
| |--margin--|
+------------------------------------------------------+----------+---> mintThat ordering is the protocol's main structural defence against a token being minted against an item that is subsequently taken back. It is also, from a depositor's point of view, most of the reason the wait exists at all.
Steam can still reverse a trade after that window — a support rollback is not confined to it. That is a custody matter rather than a deposit-state change: the token was legitimately minted and still exists, but the item behind it has gone back. LootFi flags such a token UNBACKED, stops listing it, and refuses to process a redemption for it, because there is nothing left in custody to return. Whoever holds the token still owns it on chain; LootFi cannot and does not take it back.
This is the residual risk that the wait cannot remove, and it is why redemption is a claim against custody rather than a guarantee. See Risks & limitations and Trust & security.
What a depositor should and should not do
Do:
- Let a deposit run its window. Waiting is the normal path.
- Read Track your deposit if you want to see where it is.
- Contact support through the site if a deposit looks stuck after its unlock time.
Do not:
- Ask Steam Support to reverse a deposit trade you want to keep.
- Reverse an unrelated protected trade on the same account while a deposit is in flight, if you can avoid it — the rollback can reach your deposit too.
- Assume a deposit failed because Steam shows the item nowhere. During the window, that is the expected state.
If a deposit really did end as Reversed
The item is back in your Steam inventory — that is what "Reversed" means. No token was minted, so there is nothing on-chain to unwind, and you can deposit the item again once Steam allows it to move.
Related
- Trade protection — the window reversals live inside
- Steam rules & limits — every restriction on one page
- Deposit lifecycle — every state a deposit can occupy
- Troubleshooting — what to do about a stuck deposit