# Renouncing Ownership

Ethereum smart contracts are immutable – the code deployed to a given address cannot ever be changed. But users can make code upgradeable in practice by employing the “upgradeable proxy contract” design pattern.

The proxy portion of this pattern handles the redirection of incoming requests to the current “implementation” contract.

Upgrading the code consists of changing the redirection destination. This is not modifying the code – it is modifying the data.

This pattern provides no true way to renounce control. Whoever has the power to redirect the proxy can change the code forever *because the proxy code itself cannot be changed*.

In practice ownership is renounced by changing the owner to the null address.

The idea here is that the proxy can still be redirected by whoever has the private keys to the null address. But, as discussed in that section, assuming this is functionally “nobody” is as safe as the cryptography itself.

In the case of the [Upgradeable Proxy Contract](/documentation/concept-glossary/smart-contracts/upgradeable-proxy-contract.md)[Open Zeppelin](/documentation/concept-glossary/smart-contracts/upgradeable-proxy-contract/open-zeppelin.md) example this looks like

```
setOwner(0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000);
```


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.chainargos.com/documentation/concept-glossary/smart-contracts/renouncing-ownership.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.