Digital Asset Inheritance

A dapp to automate fund transfers in case of death, allowing users to also share seed phrases encoded as "personal memories" with loved ones

Tech Lead with 20+ years of software development experience, masters degree in computer science, creator of multiple open-source projects.

OVERVIEW

Inheritance of crypto currencies and other digital assets is currently very complicated, expensive and cumbersome to manage.

This is especially true for those who don't have access to trusted services, or simply can't afford to do any estate planning.

Even if you setup and plan everything to make sure your loved ones are able to access your funds after you pass away, it's currently very difficult to make changes. Creating new wallets, using new blockchains etc are actions that will force you to go back and redefine your estate plan - which again wastes time money and resources.

VALUE PROPOSITION

We propose a DApp that allows people to use a smart contract to forward their funds in case of inactivity, but also supports creating a "personal keepsake" dictionary that encodes things you like. This can be used to encode seed phrases into "personal memories" that you share with loved ones and when combined with the dictionary, can be used to restore wallets in case you pass away.

How it will work:

Users will download an app (mobile or desktop) and be presented with options for setting up:

(1) automatic wallet transfers, triggered by a given inactivity period using a smart contract

• (a) this enables the user to transfer funds to wallets assigned to loved ones in case of prolonged inactivity or death.
• (b) it also enables the user to recover funds into backup wallets in case the original seed phrase is lost.
• (c) the wallet owner will be able to press a "reset" button to prove they are still available.

(2) a keepsake dictionary which allows encoding aything that might give access to digital assets: seed phrases, stake pool pledge addresses, logins.

• (a) The dictionary might consist of textual elements which are meaningul to the user such as their favorite songs (collected from Spotify for example), movies, books, religious verses, articles, input files given by the user, or just random text generated by the software.
• (b) For security, once the initial content set is defined, the user will be encouraged to execute following steps offline, off-chain, and even move to an air-gapped device.
• (c) The content set will be randomized to form the final dictionary, which will consist of at least 2048 unique elements. This must then be saved securely, with backups, and become part of an appropriate estate plan that ensures the family and intended beneficiaries will be able to receive this in case of death.
• (d) With the final dictionary ready, users can input their wallet seed phrases and other secrets, which will produce an output formed by elements of the dictionary. This can be shared immediately with family members.
• (e) For added security the dictionary can be "salted" with files such as photos of special moments. For example, a one or more photos of the user's daugther can be used to generated the encoded output of digital assets only the daugther should receive. If this is used then the beneficary must have the original files in their posession as well. This needs to be done once only.
• (f) Every time the user decides to create a new wallet, use another blockchain, or manage some other new digial asset, all they have to do is to encode the keys using the dictionary and send the outputs to the beneficiaries. No changes to the original estate plan required.

(3) encrypt any dictionaries and settings then save them securely on the blockchain as transaction metadata. That would require "credit" in form of ADA. Users who don't use cardano will be offered the option to simply pay with credit card and not even be aware they are using the cardano blockchain. ADA holders can simply load the app address with enough ADA to pay for the transaction fees.

EXPECTATIONS

We plan to deliver a desktop application that can run on Windows/Linux/Mac as well as Android and iPhone apps with the same functionality, using React Native.

IP/COPYRIGHT

The entire source code of this project will be available on github under the GPL V2.0 license and we hope other community developers can build on top of this to create even better solutions in the future.

PROPOSED LAUNCH

Within 5 months

PROJECT SUSTAINABILITY:

We plan to monetize on the functions that interact with the blockchain such as enabling the automatic wallet transfers and saving the encrypted backups as transaction metadata.

Also from rewards collected by the SHOP stake pool

RISKS

There are a some elements of risk around the proposed solution, namely:

1. users who set up time based triggers might be unavailable for extended periods of time in case of hospitalization and sickness and potentially come back to an empty wallet
2. the dictionary based solution depends on the dictionary being available in the future. If that is lost the funds won't be able to be recovered by this method.
3. for both approaches, some or all of the beneficiaries might not be alive so the assets bequeathed would be inaccessible.
4. for both approaches, some or all of the beneficiaries might might have lost the seed phrases or files assigned to them which means the assets would be lost.
5. There are many different laws and regulations concerning the handling of inheritance in multiple jurisdictions. Users might potentially create irregular or illegal inheritance plans which might consist of excluding family memebers who should have not been excluded, incorrect asset distribution, improper tax considerations, and potentially many more irregularities.

These will have to be addressed with a proper end user license agreement written by our lawyers.

METRICS

Code activity can be measured from commits on github.

Thank you for your support!