Chapter 8 – Costs: Balancing Security and Your Bottom Line

Predictable on-chain costs replace hidden costs of failed execution.

Alice knew that protecting her crypto wasn’t just about the initial setup — it was about minimizing hidden costs and reducing the chance that execution would break down later. She compared each option carefully, realizing that certain “free” methods could become extremely expensive when she cannot act on her own and uncertainty turned into real outcomes.

• Shared Mnemonics: Splitting a seed phrase among friends looked free at first. But Alice saw the hidden cost: a single lost shard, a misunderstanding, or a conflict could lead to irreversible loss. Even if legal action was possible afterward, it would be slow, costly, and uncertain — and it could not reverse on-chain execution.

• Multisig Wallets: In a multisig setup, the visible cost was gas. But the hidden cost was coordination: more signers meant more future transactions, more availability risk, and more opportunities for delays or deadlocks. Over time, those operational frictions could become more expensive than the fees themselves.

• Traditional Legal Approach: A will or trust seemed familiar. Yet legal fees, notaries, cross-border procedures, and court timelines could inflate costs quickly. With crypto still evolving legally across jurisdictions, Alice also saw uncertainty: additional consultations, translations, delays, and unpredictable outcomes — all while courts still could not directly execute on-chain transfers.

With CryptoLegacy, Alice could pay for a predefined execution model rather than for ad-hoc coordination:

• Contract Creation Fee: A one-time payment to create her personal CryptoLegacy contract.

• Periodic Updates (every six months): A predictable on-chain check-in that maintains normal operation and reduces reliance on manual coordination later.

• Lifetime NFT Option: A one-time NFT pass that can reduce recurring update fees and simplify long-term usage across supported chains.

CryptoLegacy did not make execution free. It made costs explicit.

Instead of “free” setups that can fail unpredictably when the owner cannot act, or legal processes that can expand into years of uncertainty, Alice preferred a model where she could understand the trade-offs and plan around them. The goal was not to minimize fees at all costs, but to avoid the far greater cost of undefined execution.

Your keys. Your crypto. No hidden costs.