The earliest known attempt to deploy a smart contract on Ethereum mainnet (Aug 7 2015, thanateros.eth). Ran out of gas before code deposit; creation bytecode reconstructed exactly.
Historical Significance
Although the deployment was unsuccessful, it represents the earliest known attempt to create a smart contract on Ethereum mainnet. It demonstrates that developers were experimenting with executable programs immediately after Ethereum’s genesis and provides contemporaneous evidence of how quickly Ethereum’s programmable capabilities were being explored.
The failed deployment also serves as a concrete illustration of the network’s early technical limitations and the evolving understanding of what constituted a successful contract deployment in Ethereum’s first days.
Context
Ethereum had only just launched, gas limits were extremely low, and developer tooling was minimal. Early developers were constrained to deploying the smallest possible programs, and distinctions between constructor execution, runtime bytecode persistence, and callable contract behavior were still being clarified through live experimentation.
Shortly afterward, increases in block gas limits enabled the first successful smart contract deployments, including simple callable contracts. These early successes marked Ethereum’s transition from attempted programmability to functioning, on-chain executable systems.
Key Facts
Description
Deployed by Anthony Eufemio (thanateros.eth), later co-founder of Digix/DigixDAO, on 2015-08-07 04:42:15 UTC at block 46,402 — about 14 hours before the first widely-cited executable contract and only 8 days into Frontier. Eufemio announced it on Reddit as "First contract on Ethereum made by me." The source is a minimal contract whose constructor records the deployer (owner = msg.sender) and returns an empty 6-byte runtime. The transaction carried just 24,000 gas, exhausted before the code-deposit step, so the account was created with empty code — making this the earliest known (unsuccessful) contract-deployment attempt on mainnet. The 41-byte creation code is reproduced byte-for-byte with the period-correct compiler.
Source Verified
Creation bytecode reproduces the deployment-transaction input byte-for-byte (41 bytes, SHA-256 cc5132f4…). Source `contract Digix { address owner; function Digix(){ owner=msg.sender; } }` compiled with soljson v0.1.1+commit.6ff4cd6, optimizer ON. The deploy was sent with only 24,000 gas and ran out before the code-deposit step, so no runtime code was stored (runtime empty on-chain); the intended runtime was the 6-byte empty body 0x606060405200. The unoptimized EXP-based address mask and the 0x22 STOP-pad both pin the codegen to v0.1.1.
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)
// Submitted by EthereumHistory (ethereumhistory.com)
// Digix — the earliest known attempt to deploy a smart contract on Ethereum mainnet.
// Deployed 2015-08-07 04:42:15 UTC (block 46,402) by Anthony Eufemio (thanateros.eth),
// address 0xA1E4380A3B1f749673E270229993eE55F35663b4. Later co-founded Digix / DigixDAO.
// The deploy ran out of gas (24,000 gas) before code deposit, so no runtime was stored;
// the creation code below reproduces the deployment transaction input byte-for-byte.
// Compiler: soljson v0.1.1+commit.6ff4cd6, optimizer ON.
contract Digix {
address owner;
function Digix() {
owner = msg.sender;
}
}External Links
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