Back to Home

FoundationTipJar

DAO
Part of The Avsa Collection
0xfb6916095ca1...a74c37c5d359
FrontierContract #8,365Source VerifiedEdit this contract
Deployed February 11, 2016 (10 years ago)Block 988,725

An early Ethereum smart contract that enabled direct, on-chain donations to the Ethereum Foundation and issued the original Unicorn token.

Frontier EraVerified Source

Historical Significance

The Foundation Tip Jar is historically significant as one of the earliest examples of Ethereum being used for direct institutional funding via smart contracts. Created by a core Ethereum Foundation contributor shortly after mainnet launch, it reflects how early Ethereum leadership viewed smart contracts as tools for transparency, coordination, and experimentation. The Unicorn token introduced through the Tip Jar later became the basis for further on-chain experiments, including the Unicorn Meat Grinder Association DAO.

Context

In 2015, Ethereum was newly launched and lacked established patterns for fundraising, token standards, or governance. Developers were actively exploring how smart contracts could replace or augment existing institutional processes. The Foundation Tip Jar emerged from this environment as a practical experiment that combined funding, transparency, and token issuance into a single on-chain system. It stands today as a preserved artifact of Ethereum’s earliest design philosophy, when even simple contracts were used to probe the social and technical possibilities of decentralized systems.

Key Facts
Deployment Block
988,725
Deployment Date
Feb 11, 2016, 05:14 PM
Code Size
7.0 KB
Gas at Deploy
1,864,511
Transactions by Year
2016520
2017479
2018171
2019123
202033
202138
202233
20234
20256

Description

The Tip Jar functioned as a simple but deliberate demonstration of Ethereum’s capabilities. It replaced traditional donation mechanisms with on-chain logic, making contributions publicly auditable and programmatically handled. The associated Unicorn token was intended as a symbolic acknowledgment of participation rather than a financial asset.

The Foundation Tip Jar was a smart contract deployed in 2015 by Alex Van de Sande while working at the Ethereum Foundation. It allowed anyone to send Ether directly to the Foundation through a transparent, permissionless contract. In return, contributors received a small experimental token known as the Unicorn token, issued automatically by the contract.

Source Verified

Etherscan verified
Heuristic Analysis

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

Detected Type: DAO

Bytecode Overview

Opcodes7,189
Unique Opcodes228
Jump Instructions301
Storage Operations275

External Links