The Future of Digital Asset Inheritance

Inheritance requires transferring private keys, the ultimate point of failure. Multisig and MPC wallets shift but don't eliminate the risk.\n- Single Point of Failure: Heir's key management becomes the new vulnerability.\n- Social Engineering Target: Inheritance processes create predictable attack surfaces for phishing.\n- Legal-Key Mismatch: Court order is useless without cryptographic proof of key ownership.

Using timelocks or dead man's switches creates its own catastrophic failure mode. Inactivity is a poor proxy for death.\n- False Positive Risk: Lost keys or prolonged inactivity triggers unwanted, irreversible asset release.\n- Oracle Dependency: Reliable death verification (Vitalik's SELF concept) requires a trusted, censorship-resistant oracle.\n- Procedural Lag: Legal probate can take months; automated release may conflict with estate law.

Inheritance logic is deployed once but must survive decades of tech evolution. Static code decays.\n- Chain Fork Risk: Hard forks or EVM obsolescence can brick contract logic.\n- Upgrade Key Centralization: Admin keys for upgrades become high-value, multi-generational targets.\n- Interface Fragility: Dependencies on external price feeds (Chainlink) or ENS resolvers introduce breaking changes.

On-chain identity is pseudonymous; off-chain identity is mutable. Bridging them is a governance nightmare.\n- Sybil Attacks: Malicious actors can forge claims of relationship.\n- DAO Governance Failure: Relying on a Kleros-like court introduces consensus risk and delay.\n- Key Fragmentation: Distributing shards (SSS) among heirs creates collusion and loss vectors.

Compliance is not a one-time event. Future laws can render an inheritance mechanism illegal or taxable at the worst moment.\n- Travel Rule & FATF: Future regulations may require identifying heirs at setup, breaking privacy.\n- Cross-Jurisdiction Conflict: Heirs in different countries face conflicting legal claims to assets.\n- Inheritance Tax Trigger: Automated transfer may automatically create a taxable event without liquidity to pay.

The only viable model may be a hybrid. Self-custody for life, regulated custody for death.\n- Fireblocks & Coinbase already offer inheritance features, accepting regulatory risk.\n- On-chain Proof-of-Custody: Use attestations from regulated entities to trigger smart contract releases.\n- Progressive Decentralization: Start centralized for heir onboarding, decay to trustless execution over time.

Centralized exchanges and self-custody wallets create single points of failure for estate transfer. The process relies on manual, off-chain legal processes vulnerable to loss, delay, and dispute.

• Legal Gray Area: Private keys as property lack clear probate precedent.
• Operational Risk: Heirs face ~6-18 month delays and potential asset forfeiture.
• Security Paradox: Secure seed phrase storage directly conflicts with accessible inheritance planning.

Move logic from legal documents to immutable code. Use multi-sig, social recovery, and dead man's switches (like Safe{Wallet} modules) to automate and verify asset transfer upon predefined conditions.

• Verifiable Execution: Heirs can cryptographically prove their claim without court orders.
• Gradual Access: Implement vesting schedules or $250k+ release thresholds for minors.
• Composability: Vaults can integrate with Chainlink oracles for proof-of-life checks or decentralized identity (ENS, SpruceID).

Transparent blockchains expose wealth to heirs and adversaries pre-mortem. Yet, complete privacy (e.g., zk-SNARKs) makes post-mortem discovery impossible, creating an unsolvable conflict for most users.

• Discovery Risk: Public addresses allow predatory targeting.
• Obfuscation Risk: Fully private assets may be permanently lost.
• Regulatory Friction: Privacy tools face scrutiny, complicating estate planning compliance.

Use cryptographic proofs (like those from Aztec, Zcash) to reveal asset existence and ownership rights only to verified heirs and executors, without exposing balances or history on-chain.

• Selective Disclosure: Prove asset ownership to a legal authority without revealing the amount.
• Minimal Trust: Executors verify claims via zk-proofs, not blind trust in a custodian.
• Future-Proof: Compatible with emerging identity primitives like Iden3 and Polygon ID.

Modern portfolios span Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin L2s, and Cosmos app-chains. Each ecosystem has unique keys, tools, and recovery processes, making unified inheritance planning a logistical nightmare.

• Multi-Chain Complexity: Managing recovery for 5+ separate seed phrases is untenable.
• Bridge Risk: Post-mortem cross-chain transfers introduce settlement and security vulnerabilities.
• Incomplete Solutions: Chain-specific tools (e.g., Solana inheritance programs) don't solve the cross-chain problem.

Abstract chain complexity. Users define a single intent ("transfer my total portfolio to these addresses"). A network of solvers (inspired by UniswapX, Across) competes to fulfill it across chains via secure bridges (LayerZero, Axelar).

• Unified Interface: One setup for an entire multi-chain estate.
• Solver Competition: Drives down cost and optimizes for security over 10+ bridges.
• Modular Design: Can plug into existing smart accounts (Safe, ERC-4337 wallets) as a module.