Soulchain: A Smart Contract-Driven Framework for Secure Posthumous Digital Asset Transfer

The proliferation of digital assets—ranging from financial accounts and social media profiles to intellectual property—has created new challenges in the domain of inheritance law and digital estate management. Existing centralized systems for digital asset succession often lack transparency, enforceability, and global consistency, particularly in jurisdictions where legislative frameworks remain underdeveloped. This paper proposes Soulchain, a decentralized framework that leverages blockchain technology, smart contracts, biometric identity verification, and oracle networks to facilitate secure, autonomous, and legally aware posthumous transfer of digital assets. The architecture of Soulchain encapsulates verifiable user registration, encrypted digital wills, oracle-triggered smart contract activation upon death confirmation, and role-based access for legal heirs. Designed with privacy, security, and legal interoperability in mind, Soulchain introduces a programmable logic for inheritance that can operate trustlessly across blockchain environments. The framework has been prototyped and evaluated for functionality, gas efficiency, and resilience to unauthorized access. This work aims to bridge the gap between technological capability and legal obligation in the domain of digital inheritance, offering a blueprint for future legislative and technical alignment.