What BAL gives you
Five capabilities, all peer-to-peer, all Bitcoin-only, all open source.
Decentralized inheritance
Plan Bitcoin inheritance without any third party β notary, spouse or custodian. Fully peer-to-peer, with no legal overhead and no intermediaries, ever.
Time-locked transactions
Transactions are created with a Locktime set to a future date. Will-Executors retain and broadcast them automatically on the delivery date. Your keys never leave your device β Electrum handles all signing.
Wallet backup
Pre-sign a recovery transaction to a secondary address. If you lose your seed, the funds are sent automatically to your backup wallet.
Economic incentives
Each inheritance transaction includes a fee for the Will-Executor, paid on confirmation. Incentives grow with Bitcoin's value over time.
Open source & community
Anyone can run a Will-Executor server and earn commissions. The community is encouraged to discover new use cases.
You stay in control
The plugin never signs on your behalf. It asks β you decide. Every refresh of your will is confirmed by you, password or hardware wallet included.
From setup to automatic execution
Six steps β from first setup to the automatic execution of your Bitcoin will. For the full protocol walkthrough, see How it works in the manual.
Add heirs
Enter the Bitcoin address of your heir(s) in the BAL plugin. No notary or intermediary required.
Prepare transaction
The wizard builds a time-locked transaction with your delivery date and the Will-Executor fee.
Sign
Electrum signs with your key. The plugin never touches your keys β the signed will is stored locally.
Send to Will-Executors
Your signed will is sent to Will-Executor servers from the WeList. They hold it until the delivery date.
Use Electrum normally
Keep using Electrum as usual. Every session auto-postpones your delivery date β Check Alive, zero effort. (in Advanced mode)
Always up to date
On close of your wallet, the plugin checks your balance and asks to refresh your will. You confirm β it never signs for you.
Note on signing. The plugin never signs on your behalf. If your wallet uses a password or a hardware wallet, you will be prompted to confirm. The plugin asks β you decide. Your will stays accurate and always under your control.
The beating heart of the protocol
The economic incentive that makes all this possible is a fee included in each inheritance transaction. It is paid when the Will-Executor transmits the inheritance transaction to the nodes, and is therefore inserted into the block. The first one to send the transaction to the nodes wins the inheritance fee.
We expect the BAL Protocol to succeed thanks to these incentives. They are substantial and grow with the value of Bitcoin over time, and they are attractive to more and more servers joining the inheritance transactions with a prospect of medium- to long-term gains.
Anybody can create a Will-Executor server to contribute to the protocol and earn commissions, since the code is available as open source. Read more in the manual: what Will-Executors are and running a Will-Executor.
Will-Executors are listed on the public WeList directory and shown directly inside the plugin. Browse the Will-Executor List β
Plugin, server and docs
Two open-source components and the documentation that ties them together.
Bitcoin After Life plugin
Created for the Electrum wallet β the gold standard among Bitcoin wallets. We hope Electrum developers will one day integrate it by default.
BAL Server
The server acts as a Will-Executor: it retains signed transactions and broadcasts them at the delivery date, so the inheritance runs without human intervention.
Documentation & examples
On bitcoin-after.life you'll find instructions to install the plug-in in Electrum and several practical examples on how to manage inheritance.
Get the plugin running
The plugin is a behavior-preserving refactor that cleanly separates the business logic from the PyQt GUI. Build a clean, integrity-checkable archive and install it in Electrum. For the full step-by-step walkthrough with screenshots, see the installation guide in the manual.
Requirements
- Electrum4.8.0 β latest stable release, tested against plugin v0.6.1.
- LicenseMIT.
Install as an external plugin (zip)
- Electrum β Tools β Plugins β install from file β pick the built zip.
- Enable Bitcoin After Life and restart Electrum.
- Recommended: verify the zip's SHA-256 matches the value printed by
build_zip.py.
Safety. This plugin builds real Bitcoin inheritance transactions with time-locks. Test on testnet or a small fund wallet first, and you always can review the generated transactions before broadcasting.
How a will is built and kept safe
The plugin generates a transaction with a Locktime set to a future date. The transaction is signed and sent to one or several Will-Executors, who retain it and broadcast it at the expiry date.
To provide the economic incentive for the Will-Executor to keep and broadcast the transaction, an output contains a fee payment, received only once the inheritance transaction is confirmed in the blockchain.
Changes to the beneficiaries or the Wallet Balance
If there are any changes to the will β for example, prior to the signed locktime, the addition of a beneficiary, or a change to the wallet balance β the will is anticipated by one day and resubmitted to the will executors, without the need to invalidate the old one, saving costly On-Chain fees.
Postpone
If the new delivery time is later than a will that was already signed and/or pushed, the previously committed coins must be invalidated on-chain first β otherwise a Will-Executor could broadcast the old, earlier-locktime transaction and execute the inheritance too early.
The will-transaction list also shows a dedicated Server column, so you always know whether each inheritance transaction is actually stored on the Will-Executor servers β independently of the row colour. See the full reference (labels, statuses, and available actions) in the WILL tab guide β
Frequently asked questions
Seven quick answers to the most common questions about the protocol and the plugin.
01What is the Bitcoin After Life Protocol for?βΎ
It is software designed to manage the inheritance of your Bitcoin stored with a seed phrase (private key). It also lets you create an emergency backup of your wallet in case you lose your seed. The protocol uses time-locked transactions sent to Will-Executor servers, which broadcast them to the Bitcoin network at the pre-set delivery date.
02Why a plugin for Electrum rather than a dedicated wallet?βΎ
Because Electrum is hyper-tested and considered the gold standard among Bitcoin wallets. The BAL plugin does not sign transactions itself β that is entirely Electrum's job. This maximises security, reduces the maintenance burden, and lets users trust the signing process completely independently of BAL.
03How much does an inheritance or wallet backup cost?βΎ
An inheritance costs two fees, both paid exclusively in Bitcoin β no subscriptions, no credit cards:
- Miner fee: chosen by the user at signing time. A higher fee is recommended to ensure future confirmation.
- Will-Executor fee: deducted directly from the inheritance at execution, when the Will-Executor broadcasts the transaction.
04What is a Will-Executor?βΎ
Will-Executor servers are the beating heart of the BAL Protocol. They receive your pre-signed, time-locked transactions, store them securely, and broadcast them at the pre-set delivery date. They cannot alter or steal the transaction, because it is already fully signed by you. Their only incentive to act correctly is the fee embedded in the transaction, received only once the inheritance is confirmed on-chain.
05Can I use the plugin with a hardware wallet?βΎ
Yes β the BAL plugin is compatible with any hardware wallet supported by Electrum (Ledger, Trezor, Coldcard, BitBox02, Jade, KeepKey and others). Using a dedicated PC for cold-wallet signing is recommended for maximum security.
06Is the plugin compatible with all Electrum wallet types?βΎ
BAL works with standard Electrum wallets (single-signature, seed-based) and with hardware wallets supported by Electrum (see FAQ 11). It is not yet compatible with multisig wallets β support is planned for a future plugin release. Compatibility with Electrum's TrustedCoin (2FA) wallets is currently unknown / unsupported; it has not yet been determined whether or when this will be addressed.
If you use a multisig or TrustedCoin (2FA) wallet, please do not rely on BAL for inheritance until compatibility is confirmed.
07Is a BAL 2.0 version planned?βΎ
Yes β BAL 2.0 is in development. The main new feature will be support for staggered inheritance: instead of a single lump-sum transfer, it will be possible to schedule gradual distributions over time (for example 10% per year), giving heirs a more structured and flexible inheritance plan.
Looking for something more specific β Check Alive, running a Will-Executor, wallet compatibility, and more? See the full FAQ in the manual. Browse the full FAQ β