The Human Digital Estate:

How Oleksandr Tuholukov’s Work Is Reshaping the Preservation of Value in the Digital Age

Every day, people create digital assets without giving them a second thought. Photographs, messages, original writing, software, cryptocurrencies and the fruits of their interactions with artificial intelligence all contribute to a new form of personal and economic wealth. Yet after a person's death, much of that wealth may become inaccessible. Ukrainian attorney and digital-law researcher Oleksandr Tuholukov has proposed a comprehensive approach to this challenge, one that has found expression not only in scholarly publications but also in higher education and international technology collaboration.

We Create Digital Assets, Even Without Realizing It

What qualifies as a digital asset today? The term is often associated with cryptocurrencies, tokens, NFTs or other digital financial instruments. That narrow understanding, however, overlooks the far wider body of digital value that people generate throughout their lives.

A social-media post, a photograph, a recorded conversation, an original text, a computer program or the fruits of years of professional work may exist in digital form and retain value whether or not their creator ever contemplated further use.

Of particular interest is Tuholukov's research perspective, which treats a person's digital legacy as much broader than conventional digital financial assets. It encompasses the outcomes of both deliberate, purposeful acts and ordinary activities that leave a digital record.

A family photograph may one day become a historical document. A recorded thought may inspire a literary work. Source code may become part of a new technology product. And a specialist's accumulated expertise may continue to be used long after that specialist's professional career has ended.

Not every digital object constitutes property or can automatically pass to heirs as a matter of law. That distinction, however, makes proper identification, protection and legal classification all the more important.

Value Exists — But Will the Next Generation Inherit It?

Traditional inheritance law provides relatively established ways to transfer real estate, money, corporate interests and other property. In the digital world, however, having a legal entitlement does not necessarily mean being able to exercise it.

Heirs may know that a cryptocurrency wallet exists yet lack its private key. A family may hold documents establishing rights to a software product but have no access to its source code. A business may lose access to vital information resources when its founder dies.

The problem is even greater when no one but the owner knew that particular digital assets existed. Humanity has learned to accumulate vast quantities of information, but it has yet to develop a universal mechanism for passing that information lawfully from one generation to the next.

This gap between legal succession and actual access to digital resources has become a central theme of Tuholukov's research. The challenge is not simply to pass on a password, but to build an orderly record of a person's digital legacy, establish rights to its components and determine how they may subsequently be used.

The Digital Vault as Legal Infrastructure

In his scholarly publications, Tuholukov and his co-authors explore how inheritance law can be integrated with blockchain, Web3, digital identity systems and cryptographic safeguards.

Their work on digital-asset succession, digital vaults and digital-estate management considers a comprehensive system capable of connecting technological mechanisms with legally defined rights.

It is tempting to picture such a system as a personal digital safe, but its purpose would extend well beyond holding files and passwords. Owners could organize digital resources, establish different levels of access, designate authorized individuals and specify conditions under which particular assets could pass to successors.

The underlying architecture would need to verify legal authority, protect confidential information and ensure that an owner's instructions are followed. What sets the approach apart is the view of the digital vault as a building block of future legal infrastructure for the digital world.

In other words, technology should not replace the law. It should make legal rights genuinely exercisable.

When Research Begins to Find Uses Beyond Its Authors

When assessing the promise of research, I look for evidence that its findings are being used beyond the immediate circle of their authors. In Tuholukov's case, there are already examples of this.

His scholarship has been the subject of substantive academic assessments. Professors Tetiana Komarova, Olha Andrieieva and Borys Leonov, among others, have prepared expert and recommendation letters addressing the research and its professional significance.

Digital inheritance sits at the intersection of several disciplines. Understanding it requires expertise in civil law, information technology, international regulation and the economic implications of digitalization.

Even more revealing is the use of these research findings in education. Tuholukov's work has been accepted for use by Ukrainian higher-education institutions, where it has been incorporated into teaching materials and the preparation of future professionals.

Once research enters the university classroom, it ceases to be solely a subject of debate among its authors and becomes material through which others develop their knowledge. This is evidence of its practical educational relevance.

From Academic Theory to International Technology Collaboration

The movement of this research into the commercial arena is equally noteworthy. Applied work by Tuholukov and his colleagues has become the subject of an international licensing collaboration between a U.S. technology company and a European partner based in Portugal.

The arrangement envisages using the technological work as a foundation for further development of a model for managing digital assets and transferring them through inheritance, with a view to the European market.

As a practicing attorney, I find this particularly significant. Proposing a legal concept and defending it in a scholarly article is one thing. Developing solutions that become the subject of commercial arrangements with an overseas company is another.

At that point, a scientific idea acquires a further dimension: its potential contribution to a concrete technology product. The international aspect matters especially because an asset owner, an heir, a digital platform and a legal entity may all be located in different countries.

A commercial agreement should not be confused with completed technological deployment. It does, however, demonstrate practical interest in the solutions and in their continued development.

U.S. Patent Filings and the Future of Digital Succession

Another strand of Tuholukov's work concerns technological inventions for which patent applications have been filed in the United States. He is a co-inventor of 'Web3 Based Encrypted Digital Life Safe with Automated Inheritance Mechanisms,' a proposed secure digital environment with mechanisms for automating aspects of inheritance.

The idea is not simply to store information, but to connect legally defined procedures for transferring rights with technological tools for managing digital resources.

In the future, such an architecture could help verify legally significant events, identify authorized persons and implement access rules set by the owner. Protection of personal data and compliance with applicable law would remain essential.

Filing a patent application does not, by itself, establish patentability or demonstrate that a technology works in practice. It does, however, mark the progression from theoretical research toward a formally articulated technical concept.

Why Governments Also Have a Stake in Preserving Digital Estates

Inheritance is generally viewed as a private matter for individuals and their families. In a digital economy, however, it increasingly has wider implications.

Software, intellectual property, digital financial instruments and commercially valuable information resources can all form part of economic activity. If access to such resources disappears after an owner's death, their potential economic value may never be realized.

This is particularly clear in intellectual property and technology entrepreneurship. Software, methods, algorithms and databases may take years to develop, while much of their value lies in the possibility of further improvement, licensing and use in new projects.

Sound digital-estate planning can therefore support continuity in the lawful use of transferable assets. For governments, this creates opportunities to protect property rights, preserve intellectual capital and maintain economic activity.

This, in my view, is where Tuholukov's research becomes especially relevant. His approach moves beyond the private question of transferring a digital wallet and addresses the preservation of economic value for future generations.

Artificial Intelligence: The Next Challenge for Digital Inheritance

The rise of artificial intelligence makes these questions more pressing. Individuals can already build personalized AI agents, adapt them to professional work, assemble specialist knowledge bases and develop systems that perform complex intellectual tasks.

A lawyer, for example, may spend years developing a digital assistant grounded in professional methods. An engineer may design an intelligent system incorporating distinctive technical solutions; an entrepreneur may build an AI agent to manage business operations.

Over time, such systems may acquire commercial value, although rights to their individual components will depend on law and contracts. Who will control this legacy when its lawful rights holder dies? Who may continue using it, and on what terms?

This is where structured digital-asset records, secure storage and legally governed transfers offer new possibilities. In the future, estate planning may have to account for complex technological systems comprising software, data, intellectual work and other transferable rights.

From Scholarly Debate to Regulatory Proposals

Tuholukov's participation in the U.S. discussion about digital-asset regulation represents a further development of his research.

Together with Dmytro Lyushenko, he submitted written proposals to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Crypto Task Force. The submission addressed digital-asset custody, digital inheritance and the tokenization of real-world assets.

Among the issues raised were access procedures in the event of an owner's death or incapacity, verification of successors' authority and the use of technological systems integrated with legal instruments.

The SEC published the submission in its official repository of written materials. Publication does not imply regulatory endorsement, but it confirms that the proposals entered the U.S. public regulatory discussion.

The Law Must Learn to Preserve Our Digital Legacy

Inheritance law has historically evolved alongside the forms that property takes. Land, buildings, money, corporate interests and intellectual property have progressively become subject to increasingly sophisticated succession mechanisms.

Today the law faces a new task: ensuring the preservation and lawful transfer of digital legacies that may have professional, cultural and social importance as well as economic value.

What distinguishes Tuholukov's research, in my assessment, is not simply the use of blockchain or another means of securing digital keys. Its strength lies in the integrated approach connecting the identification and classification of digital assets with their organization, legal authentication, secure preservation and eventual transfer.

Crucially, the work has not remained confined to its authors' publications: it has received academic assessment, found a place in education and become part of international technology collaboration.

Further research, technical testing, legal development and international standardization will be necessary before such systems can be deployed at scale. Nevertheless, the movement from academic analysis to educational use and commercial development points to the promise of this field.

Ultimately, the true challenge of the digital age is not merely to create more and more digital value, but to ensure that it does not disappear with the person who created it.

«Law & Business» Profile 

Oleksandr Tuholukov has practiced law in Ukraine since 2008 and is also registered as a foreign lawyer in the Republic of Poland. An author of scholarly publications, researcher and innovator in digital assets, LegalTech, blockchain and digital inheritance, he pursues professional and research activities spanning Ukraine, Europe and the United States. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3661-764X.

Закон і Бізнес