Bitcoin Inheritance Without a Lawyer: The Liana Wallet Guide & Dead Man's Switch

"Not your keys, not your coins." That's the first law of Bitcoin sovereignty. But have you thought about the second law? "Lost keys, lost coins."

The greatest paradox of self-custody is death. If you make your setup so secure that no thief in the world can get to it, your heirs probably can't get to it either. Make it accessible for your heirs (note in a safe, lawyer with a key), and you create security vulnerabilities that could cost you everything while you're still alive.

Millions of Bitcoin are already lost forever because owners died and took their keys to the grave. Until now, the solution was either complicated or required trusting third parties.

In this article I'll show you how Liana Wallet solves this problem — with a programmable Dead Man's Switch directly on the blockchain.

1. The Problem: Why Conventional Inheritance Plans Fail

Traditionally, Bitcoiners have only bad options for inheritance:

• The Lawyer/Notary: You hand keys to a third party. That breaks the "Don't Trust, Verify" principle. The lawyer could be hacked or dishonest.
• Shamir's Secret Sharing (SSS): You split your seed into pieces. Mathematically secure, but operationally a nightmare. Can your heirs actually reconstruct an SSS scheme when you're gone?
• The "Note in the Safe": Simple, but risky. If a burglar finds the note, the money is gone ("Wrench Attack").

What we need is a system that is maximally secure during your lifetime (nobody can spend without you) and automatically accessible upon death.

2. The Solution: Liana and the "15-Month Strategy"

Liana is a wallet that builds logic into your transactions. It uses a Bitcoin feature called timelocks. The concept works like a digital dead man's switch.

How the Dead Man's Switch works:

1. The Primary Path (You're Alive): You have your normal hardware wallets (e.g. a BitBox02). With these you can move your coins at any time.
2. The Recovery Path (The Heir): There is a second key (the heir's). It is embedded in the wallet's code but is cryptographically invalid until a certain amount of time has passed.
3. The Timer: We set a timer on the blockchain — for example, 15 months.

Every time you make a transaction (or send yourself funds once a year — a so-called "Refresh") the timer on the blockchain resets. The heir's key remains worthless.

The scenario: If you die or become incapacitated, your transactions stop. The timer runs out. After 15 months (approx. 65,000 blocks) the recovery path becomes valid on the blockchain. Only then — and not a day earlier — can the heir's key move the coins.

3. Under the Hood: Miniscript & Decaying Multisig

How is this technically possible? Liana uses Miniscript. This is a language that makes Bitcoin Script (Bitcoin's machine code) readable and safe. It lets us combine conditions like "AND", "OR", and "OLDER THAN".

A powerful feature here is Decaying Multisig. Imagine you have a high-security company setup with 3-of-5 keys. If you lose 3 keys, the coins are normally gone. With Liana you can program:

• Today: 3 of 5 keys are required.
• After 4 years of inactivity: 2 of 5 keys suffice.
• After 5 years of inactivity: 1 of 5 keys suffices.

This converts the risk of "total loss" into the risk of "temporary lockout". Elegant, right?

4. Guide: Your Estate Setup in 4 Phases

Liana is not a wallet you install and forget. It is an active protocol. Here's the workflow:

Phase 1: Design & Topology

Decide on a structure.
Primary (everyday use): E.g. your BitBox02 (single sig) or a 2-of-3 setup for high security.
Recovery (heir): A separate signing setup (e.g. a Ledger or a SeedSigner with SeedQR), stored securely with the heir or in a bank safe deposit box.

Phase 2: Generate Keys

Generate the heir's key on a separate, clean device. This key must never touch your normal computer. After creation, the seed (the 12/24 words) is secured on steel and sealed. Only the public key (xpub) goes into the Liana software.

Phase 3: Setup in Liana

You install the Liana desktop app (Windows/Mac/Linux). You link your primary key and the heir's xpub. Then you set the timelock (e.g. 65,000 blocks).

Important: With Liana, the seed alone is not enough as a backup! You must also back up the descriptor. The descriptor is the blueprint that says: "This seed belongs to a timelock script." Without the descriptor, your heirs cannot find the coins on the blockchain. (Since Liana v13 there are encrypted descriptor backups that simplify this.)

Phase 4: The Handover Package

Your heir receives a package physically (or via notary). It contains:

• The recovery seed (sealed).
• The descriptor (on a USB stick or as a QR code).
• A simple guide: "Install Liana, load this file, enter the seed."
• The instruction: "Check my address. If nothing has moved there for 15 months, you can claim the funds."

5. Hardware & Node: What You Need

Liana is a software coordinator. The security comes from your hardware wallet.

• Hardware: The BitBox02 (Bitcoin-only) is ideal, as it natively supports Miniscript. It shows you on the display exactly: "Spendable after 65,000 blocks." This prevents compromised software from tricking you.
• Node: To know whether 15 months have passed, Liana needs to know the blockchain. Don't worry, you don't need 600 GB of storage. Liana offers a "Managed Pruned Node". It downloads the chain once, verifies everything, and deletes old data. It only needs about 10–20 GB on your laptop.

6. Security: Test First, Inherit Later!

You don't put your life savings into a script you haven't tested. A typo in the code could lock coins forever. But: don't test on the expensive mainnet or chaotic testnet3.

Use Bitcoin Signet. Liana lets you create a Signet wallet with one click. Blocks run reliably there.

• Get worthless Signet coins (faucet).
• Set a timelock to 20 blocks (approx. 3 hours).
• Simulate your death (wait 3 hours).
• Try to recover using the heir's key.

Only when this dry run ("Fire Drill") succeeds should you set up the real wallet with real funds.

7. Conclusion: The Evolution of Sovereignty

Liana transforms the risk of death ("bus factor") from a catastrophe into an automated process. It is the current gold standard for digital inheritance without trusted third parties.

It requires discipline (do the "Refresh" once a year), but the payoff is absolute certainty: your coins are yours — and when you're gone, they belong exactly to those you designated. Not the state, not the bank, and not the data void.

8. Pro Tips: Mobile, Privacy & Risks

For advanced users, there are two important details to keep in mind:

• Mobile Watch-Only: Liana is primarily desktop software. You can import your wallet via the descriptor export into the mobile app Nunchuk to safely check your balance on your phone (watch-only).
• Privacy Footprint: When the recovery case occurs, the entire script (including the timelock conditions) becomes visible on the blockchain. An analyst can then see: "This had a 15-month timelock."