Exactly right, this is why a market for assassination is unlikely to ever really emerge as a result of blockchain tech. People seem to forget that the only reason it works is because of the structured aligning of potentially competing objectives. There really isn't a way to decentralize an escrow service... I mean, you could try to leverage all the participant's competing interests - but that is a massive presumption and it doesn't even address the question of how. Not through PoW, because turtles all the way down, and not through PoS, because lol Ripple.
I agree with you, but hackers sell exploits to others all the time? One can never be sure that hackers gonna send the actual exploit. You're right the scheme does not protect from that, my initial shower thought was more about the "release to the public" part, so the public can be certain about they will get something when the amount on the crypto wallet hits the threshold.
So, whether a blockchain is used or not, there's no way to know that I'll get what I paid for or an empty text file.
So the blockchain serves no purpose in this instance.
Asking people to send you money, and them trusting you'll send them the exploit is exactly the same and no blockchain is needed (except maybe the bitcoin one, since of course you don't want to use paypal)
Assuming you can establish a zero trust, publicly declared swap of crypto for said key... A smart contract could be established to act like a bounty program for this purpose and could be re-used for sharing other secrets.
Trust. I know a blockchain is a zero trust network and all that, but if it is a trustworthy group that can prove ownership of an address/the exploit, then I'd think it could work.
I'm a blockchain hater as well, but I'm interested. What is a better platform for something like this, assuming that you trust the actor who owns the address?