SOV NETWORKWhat happens to your money when you die?
With most cryptocurrency, the honest answer is: nothing, unless someone has your keys. There is no bank to write to and no court order a blockchain will obey. Families lose savings because the one person who knew the password is gone.
SOV Network has inheritance built in. It is called the Vault.
How a Vault works
- You set SOV aside for someone you choose, to be claimed on a date you set. You choose the amount, the release date and the beneficiary. The beneficiary's name is stored only in encrypted form.
- You give them a claim key. You can also add up to three family keys, each with a hint, as a fallback.
- The SOV stays in your wallet, locked. You cannot spend it while it is locked, and you can cancel the Vault at any time, which unlocks it again.
How it is claimed
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Direct claim | Once the release date has passed, the beneficiary enters the claim key and the SOV moves to their wallet. |
| The claim key is lost | A claimant presents a family key and a statement. A council of up to nine randomly chosen citizens reviews it for seven days. It is approved when at least three have voted and at least two-thirds approve, and the SOV then moves to the claimant. |
| Nobody claims it | An abandoned Vault is not lost. If its owner shows no sign of life for 20 years, it moves to the network's operator pool, and it can be restored if the owner or a verified heir claims it. Logging in counts as a sign of life, and ordinary balances are never touched. |
Why this is possible here and not on Bitcoin
Every SOV account belongs to one verified human, and the citizens who review a fallback claim are real people chosen at random, not anonymous wallets that one person could control by the thousand. That is what makes a people-reviewed fallback safe to offer at all.
Lost your key while you are still very much alive? See how to get back into a SOV account.
Ask us anything
Questions and criticism are welcome in public, where anyone can read the answer: SOV Network Q&A. The full design, including what the network does not do yet, is in the whitepaper (section 10 lists the limits in one place).
Download SOV Network — Android, Windows, macOS and Linux. Free, open source (Apache-2.0), nothing to buy.