Every deal platform we have worked on eventually hits the same wall: the database says the deal is closed, and nobody can prove what was actually agreed.
The status column is easy. A deal moves from listing to offer to deposit to closing, and someone models it as an enum.
What breaks is everything the enum does not carry.
Who signed which version of which document. Which compliance check passed before the deposit was accepted. What the terms looked like at the moment a party agreed to them, not after three amendments.
We have built this in two very different shapes. In one, the deal state and its signed documents accumulate on a token on-chain, so the trail is external and verifiable by every party. In another, e-signature workflows built to national digital-signature standards carried the same weight off-chain.
Different technology, identical principle: the document trail is the source of truth, and the status field is only a cached view of it.
Our take — if your system moves money or transfers ownership, design the evidence layer before the state machine. Retrofitting it means reconstructing history from logs that were never meant to be evidence.
For those of you running transaction platforms: when a party disputes what was agreed, what do you actually pull to settle it?