About the Protocol

Today, in this Samhain week — time of the year when the two 'worlds' (material and spiritual) close together and better communicate — we have the launch of this new Protocol to honour Bitcoin and all positivity it will bring to humanity.

This project was originated to solve an existing problem: to leave bitcoin inheritance to one's own children, but in a decentralised manner, without the intervention of an external third party (spouse, public notary, etc.) — thus in perfect accordance with the Fundamental principle of decentralisation.

We have created this protocol (seeking inspiration from John Nash game theory 'dominant dynamics' on which bitcoin incentives are based) so that it can have own life, without the need of a central Big Brother to make it work.

It is an open-source code plug-in and a Will-Executor, taking in charge the inheritance transactions' push, will stay active for at least the next 10 years to await the consolidation of the protocol with more and more Will-Executors joining in.

Key Features

🔐

Decentralized Inheritance

Plan Bitcoin inheritance without involving any third party (notary, spouse, custodian). Fully peer-to-peer, in perfect accordance with Bitcoin's core principle of decentralisation. No legal overhead, no intermediaries — ever.

Bitcoin Only Protocol
⏱️

Time-Locked Transactions

Transactions are created with Locktime set to a future date. Will-Executors retain and broadcast them automatically at the specified delivery date. Your keys never leave your device — Electrum handles all signing.

Desktop Bitcoin Only
💾

Wallet Backup

Pre-sign a recovery transaction to a secondary address. If you lose your seed, funds are automatically sent to your backup wallet.

Desktop Open Source
💰

Economic Incentives

Each inheritance transaction includes a fee for the Will-Executor, paid on confirmation. Incentives grow with Bitcoin's value over time.

Server Bitcoin Only
🌐

Open Source & Community

Anyone can run a Will-Executor server and earn commissions. The community is encouraged to find new use cases.

Open Source Server
View Source Code →

How It Works

Six steps — from first setup to automatic execution of your Bitcoin will.

👤 01
Add Heirs
Enter the Bitcoin address of your heir(s) in the BAL plugin. No notary or intermediary required.
📝 02
Prepare Transaction
The wizard builds a time-locked transaction with your delivery date and Will-Executor fee.
03
Sign
Electrum signs with your key. The plugin never touches your keys — the signed will is stored locally.
📡 04
Send to Will-Executors
Your signed will is sent to Will-Executor servers from the WeList. They hold it until the delivery date.
💻 05
Use Electrum Normally
Just use Electrum as usual. Every session auto-postpones your delivery date — Check Alive, zero effort.
06
Your Will, Always Up to Date
On close, the plugin checks your balance and asks to refresh your will. You confirm — it never signs for you.
① – ③  Setup
④  Deploy
⑤  Stay Alive
⑥  Auto-Execute

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 — you decide. Your will stays accurate, always under your control.

Will-Executors

The economic incentive necessary to make 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 in the block.

We expect the BAL PROTOCOL to be successful thanks to the incentives included in the inheritance transactions. These incentives are substantial and increase with the Bitcoin value in time, and above all are appealing for more and more servers to join in the inheritance transactions with a prospective for middle / long period gains.

Anybody will have the possibility to create a server Will-Executor to contribute to the protocol and earn commissions, since the code is available as open-source.

Electrum Plugin

🔌

Bitcoin After Life Plugin

The B.A.L. plug-in has been created for Electrum wallet, considered the gold standard among Bitcoin wallets. We hope one day Electrum developers will integrate it directly by default.

Desktop Open Source
View Plugin Repository →
🖥️

BAL Server

The server component acts as a Will-Executor: it retains signed transactions and broadcasts them at the specified expiry date, ensuring the inheritance process runs without human intervention.

Server Open Source
View Server Repository →
📖

Documentation & Examples

On bitcoin-after.life you will find instructions to install the plug-in in Electrum and several practical examples on how to manage heredity with the Plug-in.

Desktop
View Website →

Plugin Operations

How it works

The plugin generates a transaction with Locktime set to a future date. The transaction is signed and sent to one or several Will-Executors, who will take care in retaining the transaction and send it at the expiry date.

In order to provide economic incentives for the Will-Executor to keep and broadcast the transaction, an output will contain a fee payment, which will be received only when the heredity transaction is confirmed in the block chain.

We know technology is useful when it is easily available to people in order to improve their lives; therefore BAL's main objective will be to improve and to simplify this interface over time.

All the work carried out to implement this project and BAL protocol (Bitcoin After Life) has been procured only with payments in Bitcoin — with no use of FIAT currencies.

Frequently Asked Questions

It is a software designed to manage the inheritance of your Bitcoin stored with a seed phrase (private key). It also allows you to 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.
It is not known exactly who the author or developer is — there are likely more than one. It is an open-source software, belonging to everyone, just like Bitcoin. The first public post about Bitcoin After Life was published on BitcoinTalk on 31 October 2024 (Samhain), signed by Svātantrya. The code is open to all, and anyone can contribute to its development through donations.
For the simple reason that Electrum is hyper-tested and considered the gold standard among Bitcoin wallets. The BAL plugin does not sign transactions itself — that is entirely Electrum’s job. This design choice maximises security, reduces the maintenance burden of the software, and means users can trust the signing process completely independently of BAL.
An inheritance costs two fees, both paid exclusively in Bitcoin — no subscriptions, no credit cards:
  • Miner fee: chosen by the user at the time of signing. A higher fee is recommended to ensure future confirmation.
  • Will-Executor fee: deducted directly from the inheritance at the moment of execution, when the Will-Executor broadcasts the transaction to the network.
Will-Executors are free to set their own commissions to cover server running costs. The fees are visible both on the official WeList website and directly inside the plugin. It is strongly advised not to manually lower them below what the server requests, as the server may reject the transaction entirely.
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 to the Bitcoin network 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.
No — with the latest versions of the software, even the smallest VPS is sufficient. The earnings are medium-to-long term: the Will-Executor collects Bitcoin fees in the future, when the inheritance transactions it holds reach their delivery date and get confirmed on-chain. As Bitcoin’s value grows over time, so does the value of those fees.
Yes — you need to have a second wallet already set up as the destination (for example a BlueWallet on your phone). If you lose access to your original wallet and no longer open Electrum before the delivery date, the funds will be automatically sent to the backup address. It is a practical and decentralized safety net against private key loss.
It is very simple: the plugin includes a step-by-step guided wizard. You will be asked to set two key parameters:
  • Delivery time: the future date on which the Will-Executor will broadcast the transaction.
  • Check Alive period: how often Electrum should ask you if you want to postpone the delivery date (see Q10).
Full instructions and practical examples are available on bitcoin-after.life.

The Check Alive is a parameter that defines the period of inactivity after which the BAL plugin — installed inside Electrum — will ask you whether you want to postpone your inheritance delivery date.

Example: suppose you set an inheritance date 2 years from today, with a Check Alive period of 6 months. If you open Electrum after 7 months (i.e. more than 6 months since the last postponement), the plugin will prompt you: your original delivery date is now only 1 year and 5 months away, and since you are still alive and active, you will likely want to push it back to 2 years from today again — so the plugin asks whether to postpone by another 6 months.

This mechanism ensures your will is never executed as long as you keep using Electrum within the Check Alive window. If you stop opening Electrum before the delivery date is reached, the Will-Executors will broadcast the inheritance automatically.

Yes — from version 4.7.0 onwards, the BAL plugin is fully compatible with Electrum Portable. This makes it usable on older PCs or in offline / air-gapped environments, adding an extra layer of security for users who prefer cold wallet setups.
Yes — 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.
The plugin monitors your UTXO balance every time you close Electrum. If it detects a change (funds sent or received), it will automatically prompt you to update the inheritance transaction to reflect the new balance. This prevents two problems: new funds being excluded from the inheritance, or the old transaction being rejected by the network because its inputs were already spent.
Yes — the WeList (the official Will-Executor directory) is open to everyone. Adding your server requires a donation of approximately 30,000 satoshis to cover the management costs of the official list. Once registered, your server will be visible to all BAL users directly inside the plugin.
Yes — the plugin was designed to be used by everyday people, not just technical users. The guided wizard simplifies every step of the process, and the BAL team’s ongoing goal is to keep the interface as simple and intuitive as possible. Detailed documentation and practical examples are available on bitcoin-after.life.
Yes — BAL 2.0 is currently 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.
No problem — the plugin proceeds to write the inheritance and send it to the Will-Executors even if there is an incoming transaction still pending in the mempool. It is sufficient that the transaction is visible in the mempool; it does not need to be confirmed yet. The plugin handles this case automatically.