As the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry generates new ways to form a “crypto will,” the concept of crypto inheritance continues to grow at a rapid pace.
Kirobo, an Israeli crypto software company, is attempting to fill a huge gap in the DeFi market by allowing crypto investors to hand over private keys or transfer assets according to their last will. On May 31, the company announced the launch of an inheritance function for Liquid Vault, a decentralized crypto wallet that allows users to pick crypto wallets to inherit their assets.
The innovative system eliminates the need for lawyers, government agencies, or any other centralized organization to create and execute an automated testament. Instead, users can choose up to eight beneficiaries and date to distribute the funds to the chosen wallets.
Kirobo’s Liquid Vault
Like the wallet’s backup feature, Liquid Vault’s new inheritance method is built on Kirobo’s unique “future conditional transactions” technology. The tool enables users to create future transactions or obtain a secondary access point to crypto based on certain parameters.
“Future conditional transactions is a one-of-a-kind smart contract infrastructure.” Asaf Naim, CEO of Kirobo, explained, “It allows consumers to sign future transactions and condition them on nearly anything.” “It also allows other parties to construct complex services on the blockchain without writing smart contracts,” the CEO continued.
The Liquid Vault wallet, released in beta in late 2021, supports Ether and all ERC-20 tokens, including the Ethereum-based Bitcoin, Wrapped Bitcoin, and ERC-721 nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The inheritance tool in Liquid Vault supports ETH and ERC-20 tokens at the moment, with Kirobo planning to add support for NFTs in future versions.
Issues with Crypto Inheritance
“There’s a growing trend among Web3 users to hold considerable amounts of cryptocurrencies, increasingly relying on these assets in investment portfolios and retirement nest eggs,” Naim observed.
According to the CEO, the new tool provides a simple and safe succession method for passing digital wealth to future generations while “keeping true to Web3’s decentralization and community ownership goals.”
Crypto inheritance is one of the most concerning issues for crypto owners, as private cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are designed to prevent anyone other than the owners from controlling their assets. As of 2020, it was anticipated that up to 4 million BTC, or roughly 20% of total circulating BTC, will be lost forever owing to lost access to BTC, with a substantial percentage presumably due to death.
However, there are various methods for passing crypto on to the next generation, including employing software inheritance solutions or just sharing keys with trustworthy family members.
