Summary

Vulnerability Details

From a game theory point of view, the buyer is never incentivized to call the confirmReceipt as it is always a strictly dominated strategy, here are the payout option for the buyer:

• confirmReceipt: He will paying the full price to the seller

• initiateDispute: Initialize a dispute and waiting for the arbiter to make a decision, this allow the buyer to keep the options open and his outcome will be either better or the same as the confirmReceipt's output. In addition to that, even if the arbiter chooses zero as the buyerAward, the seller will not be getting the full price as a portion of it was paid to the arbiter.
  Therefore, the confirmReceipt as it is always a strictly dominated strategy which the buyer will never opt for if he is trying to follow the optimal strategy to maximize his payoff.

Impact

The seller will not get the full price in most of the cases as he can be easily grieved by the buyer due to the nature of outcomes.

Tools Used

Manual review & Game theory Knowledge

Recommendations

Consider adapting the payoff matrix for the situation in order to make all the options possible and removing the strictly dominated strategy.