bitcoinafterlife
f03a985ae5
2.0 KiB
:material-calendar-clock: Delivery time
The delivery time (technically the transaction's nLockTime) is the date on which the Will-Executors broadcast your inheritance to the Bitcoin network.
How to express it
| Form | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Date | 1 December 2027 | A precise calendar date, pickable from the system calendar |
| Raw / relative | 1y |
One year from today |
1d |
Tomorrow |
Timing tolerance
The plugin converts your date into an estimated block height, so execution is not accurate to the minute:
- With relative values, expect a tolerance of a few hours.
- Bitcoin nodes accept a time-locked transaction based on the median time past of the last 11 blocks, so in practice the inheritance is executed on average about one hour after the time you set.
For an inheritance measured in years, this is irrelevant. It only matters if you are running a short test.
!!! info "Why nobody can execute it early"
A transaction with a future nLockTime is rejected by the Bitcoin mempool until that time is reached. This is a consensus rule, not a courtesy: even a malicious Will-Executor cannot make the inheritance happen sooner.
No expiry, no upper limit in practice
Absolute time-locks are not subject to the ~15 month ceiling that affects relative time-locks (BIP 68). You can set a delivery date decades ahead.
!!! tip "Even so, renew every 2–3 years" A rolling deadline — "always five years from today", refreshed periodically — is the recommended way to use BAL:
- the network grows, so renewing lets you include **newer Will-Executors** and drop ones that have shut down;
- it keeps you far from the delivery date at all times;
- it picks up future protocol improvements.
See [Keeping the will up to date](updating.md).
Changing the date later
Bringing the date forward and pushing it back are not symmetric operations — the difference is explained in Keeping the will up to date.