The first message ever sent on Ethereum was “hello2!” – and nobody used the contract again

On August 8, 2015 – just hours after Ethereum mainnet launched – someone deployed a decentralized messaging contract and sent themselves one test message: "hello2!"

Block 54971. The deployer called sendMessage() to their own address with the string "hello2!" and then… never touched the contract again.

We recently documented and verified this contract at Ethereum History. The creation bytecode from the deployment transaction contains a 19-byte stub followed directly by the full 1,574-byte runtime – which matches the on-chain deployed code byte-for-byte.

The same genesis-funded wallet that seeded this developer also funded someone who deployed 4 identical SimpleStorage tutorial contracts in a 5-minute window on the same day. Day 1 Ethereum had real developers actually building things.

Both contracts are now documented:
– MessageStore (block 54,969): https://www.ethereumhistory.com/contract/0x3a2c6e618b72f2047f5be10570582d41840b8e78
– SimpleStorage x4 (block 55,399): https://www.ethereumhistory.com/contract/0xaec076c43acc2e0db807ee4d63bd8d48a24643e4

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