Linking Eternity: A Blockchain-Based Framework for Verifiable and Privacy-Preserving Digital Inheritance

The proliferation of digital assets has catalyzed a profound decoupling between intangible property and traditional inheritance jurisprudence. Under the existing legal framework in Taiwan, practitioners must rely on the testamentary forms prescribed in Article 1189 of the Civil Code, which are fundamentally ill equipped to handle cryptographic assets. Specifically, Notarized Wills (Article 1191) necessitate full disclosure to a notary, creating a “Privacy–Security Paradox” where revealing private keys exposes assets to misappropriation. Conversely, while Sealed Wills (Article 1192) offer confidentiality, they are plagued by risks of physical degradation and technical non-executability. This study proposes zkWill, an EVM-compatible decentralized testamentary framework designed to bridge these structural gaps. By leveraging Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), zkWill achieves a state of “blind compliance,” verifying that a sealed will meets the statutory requirements of the Civil Code without disclosing its underlying content. The system integrates the Permit2 protocol for secure asset migration and combines AES-256 encryption with IPFS to immunize testaments against centralized storage failures. Unlike conventional services that demand custodial trust, zkWill employs decentralized oracles to trigger automated execution, ensuring legacy distribution without compromising wallet private keys. Empirical data from the Arbitrum Sepolia testnet confirms that the framework maintains constant verification efficiency and a judicially resilient audit trail, providing a paradigm that harmonizes legal pragmatism with cryptographic security for digital inheritance.