There are very few things in life that matter more to anyone than their loved ones. We as humans will go above and beyond for those we love, time and time again. Yet, when it comes to planning the best future for our loved ones once our time on this Earth comes to an end, we struggle mightily.
As discussed in “Where there’s a Will, there’s a way,” the uncomfortable truth of our own mortality makes it hard to plan an estate properly. This has long been an issue, far before crypto came around, but the problems are exacerbated when it comes to digital assets.
Why Do Digital Assets Require Additional Estate Planning?
As a reminder from the previous piece, all of the same traditional estate planning pitfalls also impact digital assets, but there are some additional issues that are specific to blockchain assets as well. First, crypto and blockchain are new, and the technical barriers to entry to use the technology are still quite specialized. The odds that the family happens to know how to access and use digital assets in the event of a loved one’s passing are slim. Additionally, crypto allows for self-custody, which is not something that exists in traditional finance.
If stocks or bonds are listed in a will, most people at least know what those are. There is also a custodian, often a brokerage firm, who has an account for you and holds these assets on your behalf. Part of the benefit of a custodian is that you can set up who has access to your accounts upon your passing, and the custodian will take care of ensuring that this information gets to the right place.
Given that self-custody means that the asset owner also serves as their own asset custodian, no entity will inherently assist in the transition of your digital assets upon your passing if you custody them yourself. The law firm you draft your will with may not be familiar with digital assets. The executor of the will may have never touched a blockchain before. These are all additional dilemmas in how to successfully leave this new type of asset to one’s next of kin.
How Does Vault12 Help Protect Digital Assets?
Guardians are one of the people who receive a shard connected to the client’s digital wallet, which holds their digital assets. Here is a short summary of how the cryptographic technology works from a prior Vault12 blog article, “Quantum-safe Data Storage for App Developers with Open-Source Shamir Secret Sharing for Capacitor.”
“Traditional security models create single points of failure. Lose your password manager database? Everything's gone. Company servers get compromised? Your data's exposed. Phone gets stolen? Access to your accounts vanishes.
Shamir's Secret Sharing flips this model entirely. Instead of protecting one critical thing perfectly, you distribute security across multiple independent channels. Each share can live in a different place:
One share encrypted by your phone's secure enclave
Another with a trusted friend or family member
A third is stored in a safety deposit box
Additional shards are distributed to other devices or locations
The threshold system means you're protected against multiple simultaneous failures. Device breaks? Friend moves abroad? Safety deposit box becomes inaccessible? Your system keeps working because no single failure can compromise your security.
This distributed approach creates applications that become more resilient as they scale, not more vulnerable.”
Who Bears The Cost of Procrastinating Estate Planning?
It may seem easy today to dismiss this concern, but it is vitally important to create a plan for digital assets. Vault12 has long championed the technology that makes willing self-custody digital assets safer and more reliable, but recognizes that the technology alone does not make the conversations with loved ones about this difficult topic inherently easier.
That is why the launch of Guardian Stories is so important. The campaign features a quiz to recommend guardian setups based on existing relationships and testimonials from existing community members about how utilizing Vault12 has helped them to ensure that the stress of inheriting digital assets is minimal in a time period that is already immensely stressful and difficult.
It would be a disservice not to include at least one quote from the community regarding Vault12 guardianship, so without spoiling them all, here is the sentiment from John Paul, who is one of many Vault12 guardians:
"When my best friend asked me to be one of his crypto guardians, I had no idea what I was signing up for. Six months later, I understand why this role is about much more than technology—it's about friendship, trust, and being there when it matters most."
It would have been easy for John Paul’s friend to put off their estate planning, especially with the difficult surrounding digital assets, but instead, they used Vault12. John Paul didn’t need to learn everything about crypto and blockchain in six months to be a good guardian. Simply listening to his best friend, being there when he knew that he would be needed, and keeping this shard safe on behalf of his friend was enough to assist in a critical time for his best friend and their family.
If you would like to read or share the testimonial of John Paul or other Vault12 users, they can be found on the Guardian Stories page linked earlier in this article.
What Should I Take Away From Guardian Stories
If there is any takeaway from the stories shared by our community members, it should be that overcoming the difficulty of having difficult conversations about estate planning is critical to any family in their time of need. Guardian Stories helps assist in thinking through the proper people in life to protect a legacy, utilizing the Guardian quiz, conversation guides, and testimonials from existing community members as an outline to help ensure inheritance of digital assets.
