Why Smart Wills Will Revolutionize Estate Planning

The average probate process takes 12-18 months and consumes 3-7% of the estate's value in legal fees. Heirs face opaque court procedures and potential disputes.

• Time Sink: ~450 days of administrative delay.
• Cost Center: Billions in fees extracted annually.
• Opaque Process: Beneficiaries are kept in the dark.

Smart contracts on networks like Ethereum and Solana execute bequests automatically upon verification of a death oracle (e.g., Chainlink Proof of Reserve).

• Instant Settlement: Assets transfer in minutes, not years.
• Unbreakable Rules: Conditions (e.g., age-based unlocks) are cryptographically enforced.
• Radical Transparency: All beneficiaries can audit the trust's logic and status.

Projects like Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) and Veramo enable portable, self-sovereign identity. Combined with death verification oracles, they create a trustless trigger for inheritance contracts.

• Sovereign Control: Users own their legal identity proofs.
• Trustless Triggers: No single entity can block execution.
• Composable Stack: Integrates with DeFi (Aave, Compound) for automated portfolio management posthumously.

The critical failure mode shifts from lawyers to private key custody and social recovery. Solutions like Safe{Wallet} multisigs and ERC-4337 account abstraction are essential.

• Non-Custodial Security: Heirs inherit access, not passwords.
• Social Recovery: Designated guardians can restore access if keys are lost.
• Graceful Degradation: Fallback to legal system remains as a last resort.

$30T+ in wealth is expected to transfer between generations in the US alone by 2030. Digital assets (crypto, NFTs) are currently poorly served, creating a wedge for blockchain-native solutions.

• Massive TAM: Global wealth transfer is a multi-decade trend.
• Wedge Market: Start with crypto natives, expand to tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
• Regulatory Tailwinds: Digital securities laws (e.g., Switzerland's DLT Act) are emerging.

Critics argue a centralized database could achieve the same. They miss the point: blockchain provides global settlement finality and credible neutrality. No bank or government can freeze or alter the inheritance terms.

• Censorship Resistance: The contract is law.
• Network Effects: Integrates with the global DeFi and digital asset ecosystem.
• Verifiability: Any heir can cryptographically prove the state of the will.

Traditional wills rely on lawyers and centralized executors, creating risk of loss, delay, or fraud. The solution is decentralized, verifiable custody.

• Multi-Party Computation (MPC) Vaults: Assets held in 2-of-3 multisigs with heirs and a decentralized network as keyholders.
• Time-Locked Execution: Logic triggers distribution only after a verifiable proof-of-death (e.g., from an oracle).
• Immutable Audit Trail: All custody events and beneficiary claims are recorded on-chain, providing a tamper-proof record.

Static legal documents can't handle dynamic, on-chain assets. Smart contracts enable complex, automated inheritance logic.

• Vesting Schedules: Distribute assets over time (e.g., 25% at 25 years old).
• Performance Conditions: Release funds based on oracle-attested events (e.g., university graduation).
• DeFi-Integrated Wills: Automatically harvest yield or rebalance portfolios posthumously before distribution, maximizing legacy value.

Public blockchains expose beneficiary details and asset amounts. Builders are using zero-knowledge proofs and private computation.

• ZK-Proofs of Heirship: Prove you are a valid beneficiary without revealing your identity or share size on-chain.
• Encrypted State Channels: Settlement occurs on a public L1, but sensitive negotiation and verification happen off-chain.
• Selective Disclosure: Heirs can prove claims to institutions (e.g., banks) without exposing the full will, using verifiable credentials.

Pioneering a non-custodial model focused on social attestation rather than legal documentation.

• Guardian Networks: Designate trusted individuals or entities (DAOs, institutions) as recovery signers.
• Programmable Heirship: Define heirs via on-chain addresses or ENS names, not legal names.
• Reduced Friction: Eliminates probate by using cryptographic proof instead of court validation, settling in days, not years.

The critical lynchpin. A smart will is useless without a reliable, censorship-resistant trigger. This is being solved by decentralized oracle networks.

• Multi-Source Attestation: Oracles like Chainlink aggregate data from government databases, obituaries, and trusted reporters.
• Challenge Periods & Bonding: Claims can be disputed by bonded challengers, creating a cryptoeconomic security layer against false triggers.
• Progressive Decentralization: Initial reliance on legal professional attestations, evolving to fully decentralized proof networks.

Legacies span Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, and traditional bank accounts. The winning protocol will be asset-agnostic.

• Cross-Chain Messaging: Use bridges like LayerZero or Wormhole to trigger distributions on foreign chains from a single will contract.
• Off-Chain Attestations: Tokenize claims to traditional assets (stocks, real estate) for on-chain distribution via entities like Centrifuge.
• Unified Dashboard: A single interface manages a fragmented portfolio, providing heirs with a clear claim process.

The traditional probate process is a $86B annual industry in legal fees and court costs, with settlements taking 6-24 months. Smart wills execute instantly, slashing administrative overhead to near-zero.

• Eliminates ~90% of legal fees by removing intermediaries.
• Settles assets in minutes, not years, upon verifiable death.
• Transparent audit trail on-chain prevents familial disputes.

Static paper wills fail at complex, real-world scenarios. Smart contracts enable programmable inheritance with on-chain oracles like Chainlink verifying conditions.

• Release funds upon beneficiary reaching age 25 or achieving a milestone.
• Multi-signature social recovery requires M-of-N guardians to confirm death, preventing single points of failure.
• Dynamic asset allocation based on real-time data (e.g., donate X% if charity meets goal).

Current systems force a choice between security and privacy. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and trusted execution environments (TEEs) allow for verifiable death without exposing sensitive data.

• Prove death to the contract without publishing a death certificate publicly.
• Keep asset inventory and beneficiaries private until execution.
• Integrate with biometric oracles (e.g., VitalPass) for autonomous, fraud-proof triggering.

Modern estates include NFTs, DeFi positions, and multi-chain assets. Smart wills act as a cross-chain intent executor, unlike paper documents useless for digital assets.

• Automatically claim and bridge yields from Aave or Compound before distribution.
• Transfer soulbound tokens (SBTs) and social graph assets.
• Execute via cross-chain messaging (LayerZero, Axelar) for a unified legacy across Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin.