Do Kaspa Covenants require a separate smart contract layer?

No — Kaspa Covenants express asset logic directly on Kaspa L1 without an external execution environment. In many blockchain systems, programmable rules around asset movement require a separate smart contract platform running alongside the base chain. With Kaspa Covenants, that same category of logic — covering who can move funds, how outputs evolve, how issuance works, and which conditions must hold before assets flow — is handled natively on the base layer itself. For a developer or curious user, this means Covenant-based products have fewer moving parts because there is no secondary execution layer to depend on.