The token that became ERC-20 was deployed on Nov 3, 2015 — here's the story of MistCoin

November 3, 2015. ETH was under $1. The DAO didn't exist yet. And two Ethereum core devs just quietly deployed a token contract that would change everything.

Fabian Vogelsteller and Alex Van de Sande (avsa) created MistCoin as a demo for the Mist Wallet's custom token system. It wasn't meant to be a product — it was a prototype. The manuscript before the book.

That manuscript? It became ERC-20. The standard behind every token you've ever traded.

In 2024, the community reverse-engineered MistCoin's original 2015 bytecode and matched it to Solidity 0.1.6. Nine years of blockchain archaeology to verify the OG. Only 1M tokens will ever exist. No VC round. No roadmap. Just history, on-chain forever.

https://etherscan.io/token/0xf4eced2f682ce333f96f2d8966c613ded8fc95dd

Anyone else find early Ethereum archaeology fascinating? Curious what other historic contracts people have dug up.