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Etheria

Unknown
0x169332ae7d14...77bfbddb4011
FrontierContract #3,031Source VerifiedEdit this contract
Deployed October 29, 2015 (10 years ago)Block 459,708

Etheria v1.1—an early on-chain hexagonal tile world and pioneering NFT project—deployed on October 29, 2015, with new locking and naming features.

Frontier EraVerified Source

Historical Significance

Etheria v1.1 is one of the earliest NFT projects on Ethereum, predating ERC-721 by over two years. Its permanent on-chain locking ensured the game world's persistence, making good on blockchain's core promise of censorship resistance.

Context

Late October 2015 was a period of intense experimentation in the Ethereum community. DEVCON1, the first major Ethereum developer conference, was held in London in November 2015. Etheria's rapid v1.0→v1.1→v1.2 iteration cycle reflected the community's frenetic pace of development during the Frontier era.

Key Facts
Deployer
Cyrus Adkisson(0xcf684d...ad1bac)
Deployment Block
459,708
Deployment Date
Oct 29, 2015, 09:11 PM
Code Size
10.8 KB
Gas at Deploy
2,981,673
Transactions by Year
2015221
20179
2021884
202259
202326
202421
2025119
20266

Description

Etheria v1.1 was deployed at block 459,708 on October 29, 2015 (21:11:55 UTC), by the same pseudonymous developer responsible for the earlier Etheria versions. The contract governed a 33×33 hexagonal world stored entirely in Ethereum state, where players could own, name, farm, and trade tiles. Compared to v1.0, the v1.1 deployment added the setLocked() function and related locking logic, which the developer subsequently used to permanently lock the contract against self-destruction (locking transaction: 0x97341f4...), ensuring the game world could not be deleted even by its creator.

Tiles in v1.1 were purchased for 1 ETH each, with an in-contract offer system enabling secondary market transfers between players. Ownership was tracked directly in Solidity state mappings rather than via a transferable token standard—ERC-721 would not be proposed until 2018. Despite this, each tile functioned as a unique, non-fungible on-chain asset, making Etheria a direct ancestor of the NFT concept. The source code, compiled with Solidity v0.1.6, is preserved and verified on Etherscan.

In the original 2015 description on etheria.world, the developer wrote: "Etheria cannot be taken down. Not by the government, not by its owner-players, not even by the developer (me). Etheria will exist as long as Ethereum does." This philosophy—full decentralization of a virtual world—was unprecedented at the time. The locking of v1.1 made good on that promise, permanently rendering the contract immutable even to the deployer.

Etheria v1.1 sold out all 33×33 = 1,089 tiles, generating significant early interest from the Ethereum community. The contract has since become a historical artifact, with its tiles traded on secondary markets. The developer later acknowledged in a 2021 site update that Etheria was "the first true NFT project in history, by more than a year."

Source Verified

Etherscan verified
Heuristic Analysis

The following characteristics were detected through bytecode analysis and may not be accurate.

Detected Type: Unknown
Contains SELFDESTRUCT opcode

Bytecode Overview

Opcodes11,039
Unique Opcodes221
Jump Instructions643
Storage Operations266

External Links