# Smart Contract > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Blockchain / Software Governance **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A smart contract is code deployed on a blockchain whose state transitions execute under network consensus. ## Nexus Context The DAO shows how executable rules can become institutional infrastructure and how code-level vulnerabilities can force constitutional choices at the chain level. ## Evidence Boundary Smart contracts are neither fully autonomous nor self-interpreting; validators, clients, governance and law remain part of their operational substrate. ## Relationships [[wiki/The DAO|The DAO]], [[wiki/Ethereum|Ethereum]], [[wiki/Immutability|Immutability]], [[wiki/Infrastructure as Power|Infrastructure as Power]] ## Sources / Provenance - Ethereum.org developer documentation.