Your first hour
The whole setup in order, from creating an account to a vault your family can actually inherit.
Follow these in order. Each step depends on the one before it, and the app will keep nudging you until they are done. Most people finish in under an hour, minus the wait for identity verification.
1. Create your account
Sign up with your email and click Continue. Pick your Country of Residence and your Data Region: the place whose servers hold your encrypted vault files (India, UAE, United States, Africa, Singapore or Japan). Choose with care, because it cannot be changed afterwards. Click Next, tick the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and 18+ boxes, click Create account, and confirm the 6-digit code.
The Get started with BlockWill wizard then walks you through your name and your family name (it must be unique, and the screen checks it is Available), identity verification (step 3 below), and your phone number: pick SMS, enter your number and click Send code. It ends on Secure my legacy.
2. Complete your profile
Do this before anything else. Your will is generated from these fields, so an incomplete profile produces an incomplete will.
Each section of the profile saves separately. More detail in Your profile.
3. Verify your identity
BlockWill verifies identity through SumSub. Have a government ID and your camera ready. Most of the app stays locked until this comes back approved, and approval is not instant, so start it early and carry on with the rest once it clears.
In the setup wizard this is the Verify your identity step, right after you name your family.
The screen lists what you need before you begin: scan a government-issued ID, take a quick selfie, and allow about 2 minutes. Click Start Verification and SumSub opens inside the page.
4. Create your vault
Your vault is the encrypted container everything else lives in. Name it, then set a BlockWill Secret: a passphrase of at least 16 characters. The security-method list also offers a hardware passkey (recommended), a phone passkey and Touch ID, but a BlockWill Secret works on any device.
Click Create Your First Vault, name it, choose BlockWill Secret, name the secret, then click Set your secret and type it twice. The next screen offers Add another security method; click Create Vault, then Explore Your Vault.
Write that passphrase down somewhere physical before you continue. Nobody at BlockWill can recover it, by design.
5. Add a second way in
One unlock method is one accident away from losing everything. Open the vault, click Manage then Add method, and add Touch ID, Face ID, or a hardware key now, while you still have the first method to authorise it with. You confirm with your passphrase in a Quick security check.
The kinds of key and why each matters: Vault keys.
6. Add your assets
Property, accounts, crypto, policies, documents, whatever makes up the estate. Each asset is filed by category and type, valued, and can carry supporting files. It is all encrypted on your device before it is uploaded.
You do not have to add everything at once. Start with the things nobody else knows about, because those are the ones that get lost.
7. Add your people
Beneficiaries inherit, executors act, guardians look after minors, and asset managers help you maintain the vault. Click Add Stakeholder, fill in the details (an address is required), and click Add Stakeholder at the bottom. Executors are sent an invitation by email by default. For a beneficiary the invitation is off until you click Configure and choose Send Once or Scheduled Reminders.
An executor is the same flow with a different role selected.
Editing people, chasing invitations and granting an asset manager vault access are all in The people around your estate.
8. Write your DigiWish
Your will. It pulls from your profile and your assets, splits each asset between beneficiaries (Choose people or Edit people, then Save Allocations), and can be signed and anchored to the blockchain so its contents can be proved unchanged later.
Click Save & Sync Legacy Vaults to apply your changes. If your profile is missing details the will needs, a Complete Profile Information window asks for them first. Allocations, instructions, versions and signing are all in DigiWish.
9. Set up Vault Relay
The handover machinery: how BlockWill works out that something has happened to you and passes the vault to your beneficiaries. Pick your Inactivity Timer and click Update VaultRelay (Enable VaultRelay the first time). Decide whether you also want a fixed dead-man-switch date, and make sure your executors know they are executors.
The two paths, what an executor has to confirm, and the wellness check-ins that keep the timer reset: Vault Relay.
Once you are set up
The app goes quiet. What you come back for:
- Keeping assets current as you buy and sell things
- Re-signing your DigiWish after material changes, since an edit creates a new unsigned version
- Answering the occasional wellness check-in, which resets your inactivity timer
- Reviewing who has access, in everyday tasks
The one thing worth doing today rather than eventually is step 5. Everything else can be corrected later. Being locked out cannot.