The first publicly posted Ethereum contract that returned a value when called, demonstrating interactive smart contract execution.
Historical Significance
This contract represents the first publicly demonstrated, callable smart contract on Ethereum. While aedigix’s earlier deployment holds the distinction of being first by transaction order, Linagee’s contract was the first to show what smart contracts were meant to do: expose functions that could be invoked by users.
The distinction mattered even at the time. In the original Reddit threads, Linagee explicitly acknowledged the earlier deployment but argued that a contract which “does something” better captured Ethereum’s promise. That framing helped shape how early developers and users understood smart contracts as interactive systems rather than static artifacts.
Context
These contracts were deployed during Ethereum’s earliest operational days, when gas limits were still rising and tooling was limited to command-line clients like geth. Developers were discovering, in real time, what was possible on-chain as protocol parameters evolved.
The sequence of events — first a minimal, non-interactive contract, followed shortly by a callable one — captures a key moment in Ethereum’s maturation. It marks the point where Ethereum crossed from merely supporting code storage to enabling practical, user-invoked computation on a live blockchain.
Key Facts
Description
Linagee’s contract is effectively Ethereum’s first public “Hello World” that users could call and observe behavior from. Its purpose was pedagogical rather than financial, showing that contracts were not just stored code but executable programs that anyone could interact with.
The accompanying Reddit post served as an early tutorial, walking users through ABI usage, contract addresses, and the mechanics of calling contracts long before web-based tooling or wallets existed.
On August 7, 2015, a developer known as Linagee published a simple Ethereum contract that exposed a callable function returning a string: “Hello Ethereum”. While not the earliest contract deployed on Ethereum, it was the first publicly shared example of a contract that users could meaningfully call and receive a response from.
Earlier that same day, another developer, aedigix, deployed what is widely considered the first Ethereum contract by transaction order. That contract stored an owner address but intentionally did nothing else, a design choice driven by extremely low gas limits at the time. As aedigix later explained, it was “the cheapest contract that could fit with a low gasLimit.”
Linagee’s contract followed shortly after gas limits increased enough to support basic function calls, marking the transition from inert on-chain code to interactive smart contracts.
The contract was deployed at address 0xa3483b08c8a0f33eb07aff3a66fbcaf5c9018cdc in block 49,428 and could be invoked directly via the geth console using an ABI.
Source Verified
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 on Etherscan.
Show source code (Solidity)
contract testContract {
function go() constant returns (string) {
return "Hello Ethereum!";
}
}