Family inheritance wallet
The family inheritance wallet is a design exploration for an app designed to create flexible wallets for family savings. It suggests features designed to help with sustainable long-term storage and inheritance planning.
But when it comes to inheritance, technology is not everything. Knowledge, documentation, practice and social processes are important for any setup to work over the long term. This exploration includes not only designs and prototypes of the wallet application, but also thoughts around social processes to ensure that funds will not be lost.
What are we building?
Imagine a product that helps you create and use a custody setup for your bitcoin savings while including your loved ones from the beginning. But because you plan to live a long and happy life, the app allows you to set up a recovery path that helps you recover your funds even in catastrophic scenarios.
On top of that, the app allows you to add your heirs’ hardware wallets and use them to create a dedicated inheritance key set. Since it is designed for long-term storage, it also includes regular key checks and other supporting features.
All of this is done without compromising your financial privacy. You don’t want anyone to know how much bitcoin you have or to monitor your transactions.
Chapters
Overview
Before we dive into the details, we will introduce you to the Jones family. We are also going to look at how they plan to set up their family savings in general.
Wallet creation
Our application lets users create flexible multi-key wallets with timelocked recovery paths to help them recover funds while they are still alive. On top of that, users can create and manage dedicated inheritance keys that are held by their heirs.
Wallet backup (coming soon)
When backing up multi-key wallets, there are more moving parts to consider than with single-key wallets. Our application helps users with that.
Testing (coming soon)
To help users make sure that their wallet works as intended, the app offers features that let them test their setup, before they move all of their savings to their newly created wallet.
Operational phase (coming soon)
Involving the potential heirs early on is great, but it also has implications for privacy and security. Our application combines built-in features with social processes to mitigate this risk. It also helps to prevent premature activation of the inheritance keys.
Managing change (coming soon)
Over time, it might become necessary for users to make changes to their savings wallet because someone lost a key or they want to make changes to the overall wallet configuration. Our app helps users make such changes and update the backup and inheritance documentation.
Recovery & inheritance (coming soon)
When it’s time for the heirs to claim their inheritance, the Jones’ children can use their own signing devices to recover their funds.
Resources
- All illustrations, mockups and interactive prototypes are available in this Figma design file.
- The Custom spending conditions page provides an introduction to how timelocks work in bitcoin.