49 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
# What Will-Executors are
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A Will-Executor is a server with one narrow job: **it stores pre-signed inheritance transactions and broadcasts them to the Bitcoin network on the date the user chose.** Nothing else.
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## What a Will-Executor cannot do
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- **It cannot spend your funds.** It holds no keys.
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- **It cannot alter the transaction.** The transaction is already fully signed by you; any modification would invalidate the signature.
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- **It cannot execute early.** The transaction carries an absolute `nLockTime`, and Bitcoin nodes reject it until that date is reached.
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- **It does not coordinate with other Will-Executors.** Every node is independent. There is no central point to attack or compromise.
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What it *does* require is longevity: being still there, still working, years from now.
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!!! info "See the whole flow"
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The [architecture diagram](../protocol/how-it-works.md#architecture-at-a-glance) shows how a
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will travels from the Electrum plugin, through a Will-Executor, to the Bitcoin network.
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## Why competition makes it work
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When you create your will, the plugin generates **a separate transaction for every Will-Executor you selected**. Each of those transactions carries an extra output paying that specific server its fee.
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On the delivery date, every Will-Executor holding a copy can broadcast. Only one transaction can confirm — and the fee goes to whoever broadcast the one that made it into a block. It is a competitive mechanism, conceptually close to mining: **the reward goes to whoever is actually operating**, not to whoever is merely listed in a directory.
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For you, the consequence is simple and reassuring: **only one of your selected Will-Executors has to still be alive on the delivery date** for the inheritance to be executed.
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!!! tip "Select as many as you can"
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Redundancy is the whole guarantee. Each additional Will-Executor is another independent chance that someone is still there when it matters.
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## Who sets the fees
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Each Will-Executor freely sets its own commission — there is no price imposed by the protocol. The market sets the price.
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When creating your will you can exclude servers you consider too expensive. It is also worth being wary of **suspiciously cheap** ones: a price that cannot cover the cost of running a server for years is a hint that the service may not last.
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!!! warning "Don't lower the fee manually"
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Fees are shown both on the [WeList](welist.md) and inside the plugin. Setting a fee below what a server asks will typically get your transaction rejected by that server.
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## New servers cannot join old wills
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Inheritance transactions are pre-signed and already contain the address of the Will-Executor that will be paid. A signed transaction cannot be modified — so a server that joins the network today receives the wills created **from today onwards**, never the ones already out there.
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This is why renewing your will periodically is useful: it brings newer Will-Executors into your selection. See [Keeping the will up to date](../user-guide/updating.md).
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## What they can see
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The Will-Executors you select receive pre-signed transactions that reflect the state of your wallet. That is why the choice of which servers receive them stays entirely in your hands, and why privacy — alongside reliability — is the real ground of competition between Will-Executors.
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Transactions stored on the servers are **not publicly accessible**. From the plugin you can verify at any time that yours is still there: see the [Server column](../user-guide/will-tab.md#the-server-column).
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