Qualification: All Smart Contracts Are Ambiguous

Record: kaal:position:2026-08-08-058 · 2026-08-08

All Smart Contracts Are Ambiguous argues that technical facts can depend on socially determined facts, so smart-contract code can remain ambiguous. This independently qualifies the idea that code eliminates interpretive uncertainty and corresponds to Kaal's concern about how courts interpret coded agreements. The proposition does not specify Kaal's reasonable-human interpretive test or a particular legal doctrine.

Affirmed commentary position. This record extends a source-bound scholarly claim but is not a verbatim paper claim.

Holds when

The response is limited to the retrieved source proposition and mapped Kaal claim unless fuller source review supports a broader conclusion.
External evidence level: abstract indexed.
Mapping review tier: substantively reviewed abstract-level qualification.
Primary mapping confidence: 0.62.
The primary mapping cleared the automated ambiguity test; substantive scope remains review-bound.
Evidence is limited to an exact proposition in a Crossref-indexed abstract; full text was not reviewed.
No relationship is treated as external endorsement, citation, causation, or validation of a broader Kaal claim.
The source states that smart-contract code can remain ambiguous because technical facts depend on socially determined facts. This directly qualifies any assumption that computer code eliminates interpretive uncertainty and corresponds to Kaal's concern about human interpretation, but it does not specify a judicial reasonable-person test.

Current debate

All Smart Contracts Are Ambiguous

Scholarly basis

kaal:claim:2992962-017
Wulf A. Kaal, Craig Calcaterra, Crypto Transaction Dispute Resolution (2017). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2992962
Source PDF sha256: 80b92e67594394e38af41b769327936833de8e25d6cf3def966a6ba13bc83d17

Evidence and mapping

Evidence: abstract indexed
Review tier: substantively reviewed abstract-level qualification
Mapping confidence: 0.62
Mapping ambiguous: false

Topics

law-and-legal-systems smart-contracts historical-response scholarly-literature crossref

Provenance

Affirmed in kaal-review:2026-08-08:continuous-crossref-0010-reviewed-v1 on 2026-08-08. Review record.

Verify

Canonical markdown sha256: 181e14f342eb1c1089505504aae54699812e7de70e510ce692acc72a28a5d605
curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-08-08-058.md | sha256sum