How Does an American Option’s Early Exercise Feature Interact with Smart Contract Immutability?

An American option allows exercise at any time up to expiration. The smart contract must be coded to allow the option holder to trigger the exercise function before the contract's expiration time, which is a pre-defined condition.

While the contract's code is immutable, the state (exercised or not) is mutable based on the holder's action. The immutability ensures the rules of early exercise cannot be changed, but the contract must be flexible enough to process the action.