The earliest known Ethereum contract with executable runtime code. A single function go() that returns the string "eth", compiled with the first publicly availa...
Historical Significance
This contract represents a milestone in Ethereum’s early history as the first instance of a contract deployed with meaningful executable logic. It shows the transition from purely experimental or placeholder deployments to contracts that actively respond to calls and return structured data.
The contract predates widespread Solidity adoption and illustrates how early developers interacted directly with EVM bytecode to explore what on-chain programs could do.
Context
In August 2015, Ethereum was only weeks old. Solidity was still in its earliest iterations, and most developers interacted with the EVM through raw bytecode or very thin abstractions. Common patterns such as ABI encoding, function selectors, and standardized interfaces were still being discovered through experimentation.
This deployment occurred during that formative period, when developers were establishing the basic building blocks of contract interaction that later became foundational to Ethereum application development.
Key Facts
Description
The deployed bytecode includes function dispatch logic, conditional branching, memory operations, and a callable method that returns a static string value. The contract responds to a specific function selector and returns the ASCII string "eth", encoded and assembled manually at the bytecode level.
This deployment demonstrates an early understanding of the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s call semantics, ABI-style function selection, and memory layout, at a time when high-level tooling and standardized interfaces were not yet available or widely used.
This contract was deployed on August 7, 2015 at block 48,643 and is the first known Ethereum contract whose deployed runtime bytecode contains executable logic beyond minimal storage or initialization patterns. Unlike earlier deployments that either contained no runtime code or only trivial state initialization, this contract includes callable functions and control flow.
Source Verified
Compiled from a single-function contract: contract Test { function go() returns (string) { return "eth"; } }. Matched using soljson v0.1.1+commit.6ff4cd6, the earliest available Solidity compiler release. Optimizer off. Byte-for-byte match of all 285 bytes.
Historian Categories
Heuristic Analysis
The following characteristics were detected through bytecode analysis and may not be accurate.
Frontier Era
The initial release of Ethereum. A bare-bones implementation for technical users.
Bytecode Overview
Verified Source Available
Source verified through compiler archaeology and exact bytecode matching.
View Verification ProofShow source code (Solidity)
contract Test {
function go() returns (string) {
return "eth";
}
}