In recent years, the issue of digital heritage has been increasingly discussed in academic and regulatory circles. In the United States, most states have implemented the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA). Nevertheless, even with this legislation in place, cross-border inheritance of digital assets remains complex. According to assessments by professional estate-planning associations, a significant portion of digital assets belonging to deceased individuals remains inaccessible to heirs due to technical and procedural barriers.
Dmytro Lyushenko’s research is distinguished by its treatment of digital heritage not as a narrow issue limited to individual platforms or terms of service, but as a systemic challenge for private law and private international law that requires coordinated legal, procedural, and technical standards.
You use the term “digital heritage.” What do you mean by this concept?
I use the term “digital heritage” to denote the aggregate of digital assets and data that retain legal significance after a person’s death. This includes not only cryptocurrencies or tokens, but also online accounts, digital profiles, electronic correspondence, digital archives, and other forms of digital presence.
Editorial Insert
Legal scholarship frequently notes that most legal systems still lack a comprehensive definition of digital assets as inheritable property, and that regulation is often reduced to platform terms of service or fragmented rules of succession law. Lyushenko’s approach differs in that he proposes viewing digital heritage as an independent object of legal analysis rather than a collateral byproduct of digitalization.
Why, in your view, does this field remain insufficiently regulated?
The core issue is that law historically evolved around tangible assets. Digital assets emerged far more rapidly than the mechanisms required for their legal conceptualization. As a result, situations arise in which an asset has clear economic value but lacks a well-defined inheritance regime.
Factual Context
In the United States, even after the adoption of RUFADAA, fiduciary access to digital assets is often constrained by platform policies, as evidenced by case law and analytical reviews in the field of estate planning. Lyushenko identifies this discrepancy between formal legal rights and actual access as one of the key gaps in contemporary regulation.
What specific problem did you seek to address in your research?
The central issue I examined is the gap between formal legal entitlement and actual access to digital assets. In practice, heirs may have a lawful right to an asset yet lack the technical or procedural means to exercise that right.
Independent Context
This gap has been repeatedly documented in studies on unclaimed property and digital accounts, which note that assets may exist legally while being effectively “lost” in practice. Similar concerns have been raised in interdisciplinary scholarship on digital governance and cross-border information flows, including by Prof. Olha Andrieieva, Doctor of Political Sciences, Full Professor of the International Information Department at the Educational and Scientific Institute of International Relations, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, who has emphasized the structural risks arising from the absence of coordinated legal and institutional mechanisms in transnational digital environments. Lyushenko’s contribution lies in systematizing this problem specifically within the inheritance and cross-border dimensions.
In your article, you propose a classification of digital assets. Why is this necessary?
Without classification, it is impossible to resolve fundamental issues of inheritance law. I propose a functional division into proprietary and non-proprietary digital assets in order to distinguish economic value from issues of privacy and personal data.
Editorial Note
Comparable functional classification approaches are discussed in comparative law. However, Lyushenko’s approach is distinguished by its orientation toward practical application in estate planning and fiduciary access, rather than purely theoretical analysis.
Why is national regulation insufficient?
Digital assets are not confined to a single jurisdiction. Servers, platforms, users, and heirs may all be located in different countries. Under such conditions, even well-designed national models encounter serious limitations.
Fact
International organizations and legal forums increasingly raise the issue of harmonizing minimum standards in the sphere of digital assets. Lyushenko’s research fits within this international discourse by proposing a framework for aligning approaches without undermining national sovereignty.
What do you mean by the unification of digital-heritage standards?
I am not advocating identical laws for all jurisdictions, but rather minimum harmonized standards—terminological, procedural, and technical. For example, coordinated approaches to the identification of digital assets and the conditions under which heirs may gain access to them.
What role can technology, particularly blockchain, play in this model?
I view blockchain and smart contracts as tools rather than universal solutions. They can be used to record assets or to implement pre-defined transfer conditions, but only within a clearly articulated legal framework.
Independent Context
This position is consistent with broader academic and regulatory scholarship emphasizing that technological solutions, in the absence of a coherent legal framework, cannot effectively address issues of digital-asset inheritance. Similar observations have been articulated in interdisciplinary research on regulation and governance, including by Tetiana Komarova, Dr. Sc. in Political Science, Professor in the Political Science Department at the Educational and Scientific Institute of Philosophy, Cultural Studies, and Political Science, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, who underscores the primacy of legal and institutional design in the governance of digital technologies.
In 2025, you also addressed the U.S. regulator directly with proposals concerning digital assets. What was this about?
I submitted written comments to the Crypto Task Force of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), highlighting the absence of baseline regulatory standards concerning digital heritage and the custody of digital assets. In that document, I outlined the risks that arise when inheritance and access to digital assets are left exclusively to platform contractual terms without minimum regulatory requirements.
In particular, I emphasized the need for benchmarks regarding procedures for verifying heirs’ rights, standards for controlled access, and approaches to managing digital assets in cases of death or loss of capacity of their owner.
Editorial Analysis
Submitting written comments to the SEC as part of the Crypto Task Force’s work constitutes participation in the U.S. public regulatory process. The distinctiveness of Dmytro Lyushenko’s initiative lies in framing digital heritage as a systemic regulatory risk for the digital-asset market, directly linking estate planning, fiduciary access, and custody regulation to investor protection and legal certainty.
How is this regulatory initiative connected to your academic research?
For me, it is a logical continuation of my scholarly work. In my academic articles, I analyze structural gaps in the legal regulation of digital heritage, and engagement with the regulator is a way to translate these findings into the realm of practical policy and regulatory dialogue.
Independent Context
In U.S. regulatory practice, written comments are regarded as one of the mechanisms for shaping future rules. Lyushenko’s participation in this process demonstrates his engagement in federal-level regulatory discourse, rather than a purely academic interest in the subject.
What practical significance can your research have?
I see it as an analytical foundation for policy discussions, further academic research, and the development of normative models. It may also be used in educational programs for professionals in estate planning, digital assets, and private international law.
How do your conclusions relate to the U.S. context?
In the United States, issues of digital heritage are typically considered through the lens of estate planning and fiduciary access. My research makes it possible to identify where these mechanisms function effectively and where they lose efficacy in cross-border situations.
Which directions for further research do you consider most promising?
I consider the development of universal minimum standards for digital heritage to be the most promising direction—standards that could be integrated into national legal systems without compromising their autonomy, while maintaining a balance between inheritance rights and posthumous privacy.
