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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 don't receive private balance access beyond public chain data. Limited verbs, one extension budget, one cooldown — the rest is off the table.

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 buy time. They do not take custody.

    Guardians can extend deadlines and cancel a scheduled emergency recovery during its timelock. Withdraw, transfer, change-heirs, rotate-guardians — none of those powers are available to them.

  • 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 guardian actions stay native to Bitcoin, so chain differences stay explicit.

  • If they collude — your heirs can reset active extensions.

    Once cumulative accepted guardian extensions reach the 90-day emergency threshold during an active claim, any heir can reset active extensions. Not in theory — in the contract and covered by the documented CRIT-02 remediation tests.

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 can reset active extensions once this threshold is reached

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 documented CRIT-02 review finding. The emergency-reset path is in the contract, not a company policy.

  • Trigger: 90-day extension threshold

    During an active claim, once cumulative accepted guardian extensions reach 90 days and there are active extensions, any heir can call emergencyResetExtensions.

  • 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

    Zeros the active extension usage and rolls the deadline back by that active amount. The lifetime budget stays monotonic and is not refunded.

  • What it doesn't touch

    Your balances, your heir shares, and your guardian list. The reset is about active deadline impact, not asset custody.

CCIP cross-chain relay

Your guardian lives on Base. Your linked EVM vault is on Ethereum. No problem.

The CCIPRelay contract relays supported claim and guardian sub-actions between linked EVM vaults. Bitcoin guardian actions stay native to Bitcoin, so its different trust model remains explicit.

relayExtendDeadline

Linked EVM vaults · 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. Extension actions have a 1-day cooldown, and guardian powers stay chain-specific.

Start on testnet · 30s