Introducing Phased Rollout: Inheritance on Your Schedule
A single transfer isn't always the right plan.
When you set up a Bitcoin inheritance, the default assumption is that everything moves to one person, all at once, the moment the plan triggers. For many people, that's exactly what they want. But not for everyone.
Maybe you're splitting your estate between a spouse and two kids. Maybe one heir is ready for a lump sum and another isn't: a 19-year-old inheriting a large amount overnight is a different situation than a 19-year-old receiving a set amount each year. Maybe you just want to stagger distributions for tax or planning reasons.
Until now, a Nunchuk inheritance plan released everything at a single moment: one beneficiary, one unlock. Phased Rollout opens that up: you can split the inheritance across several people, and release each share gradually over time instead of all at once.
What Phased Rollout does
Phased Rollout adds two capabilities to the off-chain inheritance protocol:
Split across beneficiaries. Divide the inheritance between multiple people, each with their own share. Your spouse gets 60%, your son gets 40%, or whatever split fits your family.
Distribute over time. Instead of a single release, you can break each beneficiary's share into stages. A stage is a portion of the inheritance that becomes available at a scheduled time. One beneficiary might receive everything in Year 5. Another might receive 2% per year for ten years, then 4% per year after that.
You can use either capability on its own, or both together.
How it works
Setting up a phased plan follows the same flow you already know, with a few new steps.
When you create an inheritance plan, you'll choose a distribution method:
- Lump sum: the entire amount transfers at once when the plan triggers. This is the original behavior, unchanged.
- Customized distribution: split across beneficiaries, set a release schedule, or both.
If you choose customized distribution, you'll decide whether the plan covers a single beneficiary or several. From there, you'll build a release schedule by creating stages. Each stage holds a percentage of the inheritance and a time at which it unlocks. The only rule: all stages together must total 100%.¹
Almost everything else stays the same. Your plan is still secured by the same multisig, still recoverable with your Backup Password, and the inheritance key still works the way it always has. There's one change for multiple beneficiaries: each heir gets their own unique Magic Phrase to look up the plan, while the Backup Password stays the same for everyone.
As with every Nunchuk plan, you hold your own keys throughout. Phased Rollout changes how funds are distributed, not who controls them. It never takes custody of your bitcoin.
What happens to unclaimed shares
A multi-beneficiary plan raises a fair question: what if one beneficiary never claims their share?
You decide in advance. When you set up a plan with multiple beneficiaries, you choose a fallback rule:
- No fallback: an unclaimed share stays in your wallet, for you to handle however you decide. Nothing is automatically redistributed.
- Inactivity fallback: if a beneficiary makes no withdrawals for a period you set after their final scheduled payout, their unclaimed share is redistributed to the other beneficiaries.
- Date-based fallback: on a specific date you choose, any unclaimed shares are redistributed to the other beneficiaries.
This means a share can't end up stranded because one heir lost access or never came forward. You set the rule once, and the plan handles the rest.
Note: Because a phased plan encodes who gets what and when, make sure your will, trust, or other estate documents reflect the same intentions.²
Try it before you commit
Phased Rollout is available today to all Honey Badger and Byzantine subscribers, new and existing. You'll need to update the Nunchuk app to version 2.6 or later. Once you're on the latest version, it's part of the inheritance flow.
If you want to see how a phased plan behaves before committing real funds, you have two good options:
- Set it up on an unused assisted wallet. Build a plan, walk through the stages, see how the schedule looks. If it's not what you want, start over.
- Test on testnet first. Run the entire flow end to end without touching mainnet bitcoin.
We'd recommend either, especially if you're planning a multi-stage schedule across several beneficiaries. Getting comfortable with the mechanics on a throwaway wallet makes setting up the real one straightforward.
Already have an off-chain plan and want to switch to Phased Rollout? There's no in-place upgrade: cancel your existing plan, then create a new one. Canceling doesn't touch your funds. They stay in the wallet, and only the inheritance configuration is reset.
Why off-chain
Phased Rollout lives in the off-chain protocol, and that's deliberate. Off-chain timelocks let you change the timelock or plan as many times as needed without disrupting your setup. That flexibility is exactly what a phased, multi-beneficiary plan needs. As your family changes, your plan can change with it, no new wallet and no moving funds required.
A quick note: Phased Rollout is an off-chain feature. If you'd rather have your inheritance enforced directly by the Bitcoin network (claimable with or without us, even years from now), that's our on-chain autonomous protocol, designed for maximum resilience. Phased Rollout isn't available there. It's a genuine tradeoff, and the right choice depends on what you're optimizing for.
Get started in the Nunchuk app, or read more about how the inheritance plan works.
¹ Shares are calculated against the full value of the estate, not just the wallet balance at the moment of a claim, so an early withdrawal by one beneficiary never reduces another's share. The plan also tracks the wallet over time: deposits increase future shares, and spending decreases them, while each beneficiary's percentage holds.
² Nunchuk does not provide legal advice. Consult a qualified professional to ensure your estate documents reflect your inheritance plan.
