CIP (Crypto Inheritance Protocol) #200
Description
CIP (Crypto Inheritance Protocol)
Project Description
CIP (Crypto Inheritance Protocol) is a privacy-first protocol designed to enable secure, confidential digital inheritance. The protocol addresses a critical gap in Web3 and digital asset ownership: the lack of a private, verifiable, and legally defensible mechanism for transferring assets and access rights upon death or incapacity.
Inheritance workflows involve highly sensitive information, including beneficiary identities, asset allocations, legal documents, and executor permissions. Exposing this information on public blockchains creates unacceptable privacy, safety, and compliance risks. CIP is being architected with Secret Network as its core privacy infrastructure, leveraging encrypted state, confidential computation, and private verification to ensure sensitive inheritance logic remains protected while still being auditable and enforceable. We have designed CIP specifically around Secret Network's unique capabilities, and we see this as a flagship use case demonstrating how confidential computing enables real-world financial services beyond DeFi, unlocking estate planning, wealth management, and insurance markets that require privacy by default.
Problem / Solution
Problem: Currently, crypto holders have no privacy-preserving way to plan for digital asset inheritance. Existing solutions force users to:
Expose sensitive family structures and asset holdings on public blockchains
Trust centralized services with complete access to their wealth
Use seed phrase hand-offs that create security vulnerabilities the moment they're written down
Navigate unclear legal frameworks without confidential executor coordination
This results in billions of dollars in crypto assets with no succession plan, creating risk for families and limiting institutional adoption of digital assets.
Solution: CIP provides privacy-first inheritance infrastructure using Secret Network's confidential computing stack:
Encrypted inheritance plans via Secret Contracts with access-controlled visibility
Confidential document verification via Secret AI, with no personal data exposed on-chain
Private coordination via Secret Path between executors, beneficiaries, and protocol components
Privacy-preserving backend services via Secret VM for complex workflows
Zero-knowledge beneficiary verification, proving eligibility without revealing identity
This enables individuals and institutions to plan for digital asset succession with the same privacy expectations as traditional estate planning, while maintaining cryptographic security and legal enforceability.
Detailed product description
Phase 1 focuses on deploying production-grade privacy infrastructure for CIP using Secret Network as the authoritative execution and verification layer. The core components include:
- Secret Contracts for encrypted inheritance logic and state, including encrypted storage of inheritance plans, executor/beneficiary permission management, trigger logic for time-based or inactivity-based execution, and a viewing key architecture for controlled data access.
- Secret AI for confidential document verification — enabling OCR, authenticity scoring, and fraud detection without exposing document contents or personal data.
- Secret VM for privacy-preserving backend services, including inactivity monitoring, multi-signal verification aggregation, and executor workflow orchestration.
- Secret Path for private coordination and signaling between protocol components, with encrypted message emission, replay protection, and failure recovery pathways.
- Confidential/ZK Beneficiary Verification enabling beneficiaries to prove eligibility without revealing identity or relationship details via client-side proof generation and on-chain verification.
Post-Phase 1 Roadmap:
- Children's Trust Accounts: Time-locked distributions with encrypted beneficiary data, designed for long-horizon inheritance planning
- Executor Marketplace: Privacy-preserving discovery and reputation system allowing families to find and verify executors without disclosing estate details
- Multi-Chain Asset Execution: Coordinated distribution across 5+ chains (ETH, BNB, Solana, BTC, and others) as cross-chain coordination matures post-Phase 1
- Dispute Resolution: Encrypted arbitration with selective disclosure, enabling conflicts to be resolved without exposing the full inheritance plan
All sensitive inheritance data and logic will be anchored on Secret Network.
Go-to-Market plan
CIP targets a real-world, non-DeFi use case with a massive and largely unaddressed market: the vast majority of crypto holders globally have no succession plan for their digital assets. Our phased approach validates product-market fit with individuals before scaling to institutions.
Crypto-Native Validation
While building on Secret Network, we begin early user validation in parallel:
Target: Self-custody crypto holders who have thought about what happens to their assets but have no private, reliable solution
Channels: Crypto Twitter/X, Telegram communities (Secret Network, Cosmos, Ethereum), and relevant Reddit communities
Tactics: Educational content around the inheritance problem, an early access program during testnet, and founder AMAs in key communities
Goal: A core group of early adopters providing feedback on privacy UX before mainnet
Individual User Growth
Expanded content and podcast presence, crypto community partnerships
New verticals: crypto parents via Children's Trust Accounts, high-net-worth individuals
Executor network: onboard certified professionals including lawyers and wealth advisors
Referral program to drive organic growth
Institutional Partnerships
Proven individual adoption opens the door to institutional pilots with exchanges, non-custodial wallets, and crypto custodians seeking compliance-friendly estate planning for their users. Co-marketing opportunities including research reports and conference presence (TOKEN2049, Cosmoverse) support ecosystem visibility.
Scale and Market Leadership
Geographic expansion into high-growth crypto markets including the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, alongside deepening institutional partnerships and positioning CIP as the industry-standard privacy infrastructure for digital inheritance.
Value capture for Secret Network ecosystem
A flagship non-DeFi use case that positions Secret Network as privacy infrastructure for real-world financial services, with direct relevance to estate planning, wealth management, and legal compliance markets
Full-stack Secret integration across Secret Contracts, Secret AI, Secret VM, and Secret Path, one of the most comprehensive uses of Secret primitives in a single production system
Reusable architecture that future builders can reference when developing privacy-critical applications requiring long-term confidentiality and legal enforceability
Institutional credibility — inheritance is one of the few applications where privacy is legally required, not just preferred. CIP winning in this market is proof that Secret Network can operate at the standards institutions demand.
Team members
Samson Ajah
Beatrice Ajah
Ugochukwu Michael
Paschal Ojezele
Team Website
hhttps://www.ciprotocol.com/
Team's experience
Samson Ajah — Technical Lead & Co-Founder
With 7+ years in blockchain engineering and product development, Samson has led projects from inception to market scale. He guided Trust AI from its earliest stage to a $40M market cap and has designed and deployed multiple audited smart contract systems. His expertise across EVM chains, DeFi primitives, and reputation scoring systems directly shapes CIP's secure, scalable infrastructure.
Beatrice Ajah — Partnerships & Growth Lead & Co-Founder
Beatrice helps guide CIP's community and partnerships. She co-founded the project and has played a steady role in bringing in our first users and organizing developer events like CIP Hackathon 1.0. With a background in business development, she focuses on building relationships, supporting user adoption, and keeping the project connected to both communities and partners.
Paschal Ojezele — Legal & Compliance Advisor
Paschal supports CIP by helping us think through the compliance side of inheritance. His background in fintech and banking compliance gives him a clear view of how inheritance planning fits into different legal frameworks. He works with the team to shape our approach to verification, executors, and cross-border considerations so that CIP can grow responsibly in different markets.
Ugochukwu Michael — Lead Developer
Ugochukwu is a seasoned Web3 developer with hands-on experience building decentralized applications using Python, Solidity, and Rust. He specializes in designing and deploying smart contracts across Ethereum and Solana ecosystems, and has built the current CIP smart contracts deployed on COTI mainnet. His proven track record with inheritance protocols and multi-chain development makes him essential for migrating CIP to Secret Network's confidential computing environment.
We've been a team for 1 year and successfully launched CIP on COTI mainnet with 200+ active users.
Team Code Repos
(https://github.com/elinteerie/cip.git)
Team LinkedIn Profiles
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samson-ajah-10aa03217
https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatrice-ajah-1a4904159
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elinteerie/
Development Roadmap
Grant Duration: 12 weeks
Team Allocation: 2 full-time engineers
Total Grant Request: $15,000
Milestone 1: Encrypted Inheritance Logic via Secret Contracts
Timeline: Weeks 1-4
Budget: $3,375
Objective: Implement CIP's core inheritance logic as Secret Contracts with encrypted state and access-controlled visibility.
Work Includes:
Encrypted storage of inheritance plans and conditions
Executor and beneficiary permission management
Trigger logic for time-based or inactivity-based execution
Encrypted references to legal documents
Viewing key architecture for controlled data access
Deliverables:
Secret Contracts deployed on mainnet
Upgrade-safe contract architecture
Developer documentation and integration guide
Comprehensive testing and internal security review
Milestone 2: Confidential Document Verification via Secret AI
Timeline: Weeks 4-6
Budget: $2,625
Objective: Verify legally required documents without exposing document contents or personal data.
Work Includes:
Encrypted document submission pipeline
OCR and validation using Secret AI
Authenticity scoring and fraud detection
On-chain proof output without document disclosure
Deliverables:
Secret AI verification workflow deployed
Encrypted document handling and disposal policy
Verification proof integration with Secret Contracts
Compliance-aligned documentation
Milestone 3: Confidential Backend Services on Secret VM
Timeline: Weeks 6-8
Budget: $2,250
Objective: Deploy privacy-preserving backend services that support complex inheritance workflows.
Work Includes:
Inactivity monitoring without public address exposure
Multi-signal verification aggregation
Executor workflow orchestration
Encrypted logging and observability
Deliverables:
Secret VM services deployed
REST interfaces integrated with CIP backend
Health monitoring and failover design
Deployment and operational documentation
Milestone 4: Private Coordination Using Secret Path
Timeline: Weeks 7-9
Budget: $2,250
Objective: Enable private coordination and signaling between protocol components without revealing sensitive inheritance data.
Work Includes:
Encrypted message emission from Secret Contracts
Private execution triggers and notifications
Replay protection and message integrity checks
Failure recovery and manual override pathways
Deliverables:
Secret Path integration live
End-to-end private execution flow
Monitoring and observability for message delivery
Technical documentation
Milestone 5: Privacy-Preserving Beneficiary Verification
Timeline: Weeks 9-11
Budget: $1,500
Objective: Enable beneficiaries to prove eligibility without revealing identity or relationship details.
Work Includes:
Confidential or zero-knowledge verification logic
Client-side proof generation
On-chain verification of authorization
Minimal audit trail without identity exposure
Deliverables:
Beneficiary verification workflow
Secret Contract verification logic
Frontend integration
User-facing privacy documentation
Milestone 6: Integration Testing and Production Readiness
Timeline: Weeks 10-12
Budget: $1,500
Objective: Ensure all Phase 1 components operate securely and reliably as a unified system.
Work Includes:
End-to-end integration testing
Failure and recovery scenario testing
Security hardening and reviews
Monitoring and incident response preparation
Deliverables:
Integration test suite
Deployment checklist and runbooks
Security review summary
Production readiness documentation.
Ideally, we can receive payments in 3 disbursements, one at the beginning of the grant, one after reaching mainnet and last payment when we reach the agreed upon KPI milestones.
Additional Information
N/A.