Legacy Protocol
Legacy Protocol · Maintained by LegacyApp
The open standard for passing on what matters.
When someone dies, their family is often left searching for accounts, policies, property, and instructions no one wrote down. Legacy Protocol gives any service that holds inheritable information a simple, open way to pass it on. The customer chooses where it goes.
The gap
The hard part is finding it.
Most people hold dozens of accounts, a few policies, a mortgage, maybe a crypto wallet, and a short list of people who should be called. That information sits across different institutions, apps, and drawers. When the moment comes, families spend months putting it back together, and some of it is never found.
There has never been a shared way to pass it on. Legacy Protocol is that shared way.
The vision
One button, everywhere it matters.
Every place that holds something valuable should be able to hand it forward. A bank that opens an account, an insurer that writes a policy, a crypto exchange that lists a wallet, a notary that records a will, a registry that holds a property title: each one can let the customer add a record to their digital legacy with a single click.
The record travels in an open format that any compatible app can read. The customer decides who sees it and when, and which service holds it. The result is a quiet promise kept: the people you leave behind will know what you wanted them to know.
Three steps
How it works
For adopters
What you gain by adopting it
The format
What a record holds
Legacy Protocol is kept simple on purpose. Seven record types cover most of what a family needs:
Records share a common category structure, so a "retirement account" or a "life insurance policy" means the same thing across apps. Customers can move between services without losing meaning.
Privacy and security
Built to stay private.
A record says that something exists and how to reach it. The secret itself stays where it belongs. For a crypto account, that can be as little as "an account exists on Kraken, the login is kept here." The private keys never travel.
Records are private and encrypted on the customer's side, so the systems that move the data never have to see its contents.
Stewardship
Open, and openly led.
LegacyApp created Legacy Protocol and maintains it. We say so plainly, because an open standard with a clear steward is easier to trust than one with none. Our commitments:
- You can implement it without fees, registration, or our permission.
- The specification is published under CC BY 4.0, the reference code under Apache 2.0.
- We will not relicense published versions after the fact. Once a version ships under these terms, those terms hold.
- Partners shape the standard through the working group. LegacyApp leads it.
Work in progress
Still open for discussion.
The first version is small, and some of the most useful decisions are still open. Should a record carry an expiry date? A review reminder? How should we describe ownership: sole, joint, beneficiary, power of attorney? How much detail is enough for each industry?
These are exactly the questions we want partners in the room for.
Who it's for
Who this is for
Join the standard
Help us set the standard.
If your organization holds something worth passing on, there is a place for you in this conversation. We bring a working format and an open table. You bring the view from your industry.