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Guardians · Extension-only · Never custodial

Three people who love you — not three who can steal from you.

Guardians extend your deadline when life gets in the way. They can't withdraw. They can't redirect heirs. They can't even read your balance. One contract verb, one budget, one cooldown — the rest is off the table.

Add guardians to my vaultWhat if they collude?

Guardians

Three people who love you — not three people who can steal from you.

Pick your family's best friend. Your old business partner. Your lawyer. They get exactly one power: push your deadline forward when life gets in the way. Nothing else. Ever.

Vault

0x74f2…a9bC

Healthy

Session budget

22 / 90 days

Resets when the owner checks in

Lifetime budget

58 / 180 days

Never resets — permanent cap

Guardian A

vitalik.eth

14 d used

Guardian B

mom.lens

8 d used

Guardian C

0xA3…e2

0 d used

  • They push forward. That's the only verb.

    The contract exposes exactly one method to guardians — extendDeadline. Withdraw, transfer, change-heirs, rotate-guardians — none of those exist in their ABI.

  • Two caps. One cooldown. Zero loopholes.

    Max 90 days per check-in cycle. Max 180 days across the vault's entire lifetime. A single guardian can add at most once per 24 h — no rapid-fire extensions.

  • They don't need to be on your chain.

    Guardians on one EVM chain can extend linked EVM vaults through CCIP relay. Bitcoin, Tron, and Solana guardian actions stay native to those networks, so chain differences stay explicit.

  • If they collude — your heirs can reset them.

    After 90 days past deadline, heirs gain an emergency reset. Not in theory — in the contract (audited CRIT-02 patch). Guardians can slow, never stop.

How guardians work on-chain

Contract constants

Numbers live on-chain. Not in our docs.

Source: InheritanceVault.sol lines 110-116

  • MAX_GUARDIANS

    10

    Up to ten per vault

  • MAX_TOTAL_EXTENSION

    90 days

    Session budget · resets when you check in

  • MAX_LIFETIME_EXTENSION

    180 days

    Permanent cap · never resets

  • GUARDIAN_EXTENSION_COOLDOWN

    24 h

    Per guardian · prevents rapid-fire extensions

  • EMERGENCY_EXTENSION_THRESHOLD

    90 days

    Heirs gain reset power past this window

Lifecycle

From add to extend to reset.

  1. 01

    You add a guardian

    Pass an address, a name, and optionally a contact method. Contract writes the guardian record and emits GuardianAdded. Takes one transaction.

  2. 02

    Guardian watches the clock

    Guardians see your vault's next-check-in deadline on their dashboard. They can subscribe to the 7-day warning via Telegram or email.

  3. 03

    You miss a check-in

    Your dead-man's switch starts preparing to hand off. Guardians are notified that they have a window to extend.

  4. 04

    Guardian extends the deadline

    One call to extendDeadline(days). Capped by session budget (90d), lifetime budget (180d), and per-guardian 24h cooldown. Contract enforces all three.

  5. 05

    You check in again

    Session budget resets to 90d. Lifetime budget stays where it was — guardians can't refresh that one. You stay in control.

Emergency reset

If your guardians collude — your heirs break the lock.

Designed directly from the OpenZeppelin CRIT-02 finding. The emergency-reset path is in the contract, not a company policy.

  • Trigger: 90 days past deadline

    If the deadline is more than 90 days overdue AND guardians keep extending to delay inheritance, heirs gain the resetExpiredClaim verb.

  • Who can call it

    Any of your named heirs (not guardians). Single-heir vaults work too — the emergency path is always available once the threshold is crossed.

  • What it does

    Wipes the session extension budget back to 0. Lifetime budget stays permanent. Guardians can no longer slow the claim; heirs proceed to signature collection.

  • What it doesn't touch

    Your balances, your heir shares, your guardian list. Guardians stay on the vault — just without extension power for the remainder of its life.

CCIP cross-chain relay

Your guardian lives on Ethereum. Your vault is on Bitcoin. No problem.

The CCIPRelay contract translates an EVM-native extend call into a verified message on the destination chain — including Bitcoin Taproot and Solana. One guardian, one signature, cross-chain reach.

relayExtendDeadline

EVM → EVM / BTC / SOL · signed on source

relaySignClaim

Heir signature forwarded, not re-authenticated

Circuit breaker

Auto-open after 3 consecutive failures per destination

Name the three people. The contract does the rest.

Add guardians in the vault settings. Swap them later with a 1-day cooldown. Extension-only access, always.

Start on testnet · 30s