Passing on cryptocurrency is uniquely challenging because it is designed to be secure and self-custodial. Billions of dollars in crypto have been lost forever because owners died without a way for their heirs to access their wallets.
The Risks of "DIY" Planning
Many people try to solve this by:
- Writing seed phrases on paper: This can be lost, stolen, or thrown away by accident.
- Sharing keys with heirs now: This breaks the security model—if your keys are shared, your assets are at risk immediately.
- Leaving keys in a bank deposit box: This reintroduces a centralized point of failure.
The Non-Custodial Solution
Deheritance uses a different approach called Shamir's Secret Sharing. Instead of storing your private key directly:
- Your master key is encrypted on your client.
- It is split into multiple "shards" or pieces.
- No single piece can unlock the vault.
- When the inheritance trigger executes (after confirmed inactivity), the pieces are recombined for your verified heirs.
What Can You Inherit?
Since we encrypt data at the file level, our system is chain-agnostic. You can pass on:
- Bitcoin & Ethereum private keys
- Hardware wallet seed phrases (Ledger/Trezor)
- DeFi positions and yield farm credentials
- NFT collections