# kaal:claim:4796714-015

**Claim.** When decentralization at the Layer 1 level is compromised, the autonomy of the smart contracts deployed on that chain is compromised by affiliation, so smart contracts are corruptible in the current design and cannot reliably serve as neutral instruments of ethical AI governance.

**Type.** mechanism  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- applies where a few dominant parties influence the underlying Layer 1
- holds under current blockchain design as of 2024

**Source quote.**

> When the decentralization of Layer 1 blockchains is compromised, the autonomy of smart contracts is inherently jeopardized, undermining their effectiveness as tools for ethical AI governance.

**From.** Wulf A. Kaal, *AI Governance* (2024), Recentralization, page 28

**Cite as.** Wulf A. Kaal, AI Governance (2024). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4796714

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `59fa63bae179e8f9b6b8efbdf90cee28400276512a1b04f9f579a48641305c93` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Kaal%20-%202024%20-%20AI%20Governance.pdf

**Failure mode.** smart contract corruptibility by affiliation  (family: recentralization-drift)

**Topics.** smart-contracts, decentralization, compliance, governance-design, ai-and-agents

**Keywords.** smart-contracts, layer-1, recentralization, automated-compliance, ai-governance

**Related claims.**

- contested_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/4941807-019
- contests: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/2992962-025

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.