Vault Relay
How BlockWill works out that something has happened to you, and hands your vault to the people who should have it.
Vault Relay is the handover machinery. It is the part of BlockWill that actually does the thing you signed up for, and it is worth understanding rather than just switching on.
There are two ways a handover can begin, and they behave very differently.
The two paths
| Inactivity timer | Dead Man's Switch | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts when | You have not signed in for X days | A fixed date you chose arrives |
| Executor confirmation | Required before anything moves | None |
| Can be stopped | Yes, by signing in, or by an executor saying it is a false alarm | No |
| Best for | Almost everyone | A hard backstop you want to run regardless |
The inactivity timer is the safe default: hitting it notifies your executors and asks them to confirm, and nothing transitions until they do. The Dead Man's Switch is an absolute commitment that fires on its date whether or not you are fine.
Reading your status
The panel shows which paths are armed, when the timer would next fire, and where the vault currently is in the process.
Setting the inactivity timer
Any sign-in resets it. You do not have to do anything special, and you will get warning emails well before it fires.
If you already have a Dead Man's Switch date set, changing only the threshold currently fails silently: the save resubmits the unchanged date, the server replies "no change", and the new threshold is not stored. Clear the switch first, change the threshold, then set the date again.
Setting a Dead Man's Switch
Choose this deliberately. There is no executor confirmation and no cooldown, and the date cannot currently be cleared from the interface once set.
Wellness check-ins
BlockWill can email you periodically to ask whether you are still around. Answering counts as activity and resets the inactivity timer. It does not affect a Dead Man's Switch, which is a fixed date by definition.
This is a single on/off switch in Privacy & Consent, not a cadence you choose. The check-ins run on a fixed quarterly schedule.
Turning them off does not disable Vault Relay. The inactivity timer still runs; you just stop getting the nudge that would have reminded you to reset it.