London Hard Fork is imminent. What are the genesis addresses of Ethereum doing six years ago?

Written by: Pan Zhixiong

At 11:26 pm Beijing time on July 30, 2015, Ethereum Block 0 was officially mined. The block contained 8,893 genesis transactions and allocated an initial 72 million ETH in the Ethereum network to 8,893 addresses.

The Ethereum network, which just celebrated its sixth birthday, is about to usher in the London hard fork upgrade this week. The EIP-1559 in this upgrade is the first economic model modification since the birth of Ethereum. The importance of this proposal is self-evident, but it has also caused great controversy among some miners and the community. As of the time of writing, 35% of the nodes have not yet upgraded to support the London hard fork, but in any case, all this will be settled in two days.

Further reading:

"Chain News Selection | Understanding Ethereum EIP-1559 Proposal, Why Is It Controversial?"

At this memorable moment for Ethereum, we did some simple analysis on the characteristics and asset holdings of those thousands of genesis addresses and found some interesting conclusions.

ETH holdings at genesis addresses fell 96%, but USD value increased nearly 40 times

There are two more intuitive dimensions to refer to the current ETH holdings of these 8893 addresses. One is the total ETH held by these addresses and the distribution of the amount of ETH held.

According to statistics from ChainNews, the total amount of ETH currently held by these 8,893 addresses is approximately 3.09 million ETH, a decrease of nearly 96% compared to 72 million ETH six years ago.

However, if we look at the dollar value, the asset prices of these addresses have increased significantly. Referring to the opening price of ETH on CoinMarketCap on August 7, 2015, which was $2.83, the total value of 72 million ETH six years ago was $200 million; but according to the current price of ETH at $2,500, the total value of 3.09 million ETH exceeds $7.7 billion, which is nearly 40 times that of six years ago. When Ethereum hit a record high of $4,300 not long ago, this increase was even more significant.

Addresses holding less than 0.01 ETH account for 60%

Another dimension is the distribution of the amount of ETH held, especially addresses with a balance of less than 0.01 ETH, which are likely to be abandoned addresses.

After sorting, it was found that there are currently 5317 genesis addresses with a balance less than 0.01, accounting for about 60% of all genesis addresses. If the standard is expanded to the number of addresses with less than 1 ETH, it will account for about 82% (7248) of all genesis addresses.

Although these addresses have transferred out most of the Ethereum, this does not mean that the users behind these addresses have sold the Ethereum, because it is also possible that they have simply transferred it to other addresses, or the users are sorting out the addresses, but these situations cannot be accurately judged from the chain.

Hodlers: Nearly 8% of addresses have almost no changes in their ETH balances, holding ETH worth $5 billion

Among this group of genesis users, 8% of the addresses have hardly moved the ETH in their hands. Especially in the past six years, the price of Ethereum has risen from a low of less than $1 to a high of more than $4,000. These people’s floating profits have increased by at least thousands of times.

In terms of specific rules, we obtained the balance of these addresses at the time of creation and the current balance. If the difference is between 0.01 ETH and -0.01 ETH, it meets the standard. Because many of these addresses have received various airdrops or created smart contracts, some ETH may be increased or decreased.

There are 723 addresses that meet this criterion. What’s more frightening is that these addresses hold more than 2 million ETH, accounting for 65% of the total ETH held by 8,893 addresses (3.09 million ETH). These 2 million ETH are currently worth about $5 billion.

The address with the largest reduction in holdings: Ethereum Foundation

Among these 8,893 addresses, the current balance of one address has decreased by more than 11.9 million ETH compared to the time of creation, which means that almost all the ETH of this address in the genesis stage has been transferred out, leaving only a small amount (less than 10 ETH).

This address (0x5abfec2…56f9) received 11.9 million ETH at the time of creation (it was also the address with the largest balance at the time of creation). A week later, this address created a smart contract address (0xde0B295…7BAe) to manage these 11.9 million ETH. Currently, this address is marked with the account label of "Ethereum Foundation" and the name label of "EthDev" (Ethereum Developer) on Etherscan (there may be multiple name labels under one account label).

So from the EthDev address, the current balance is close to 400,000 ETH, which is a 97% decrease from the 11.9 million ETH at the time of creation. However, as in the above case, the dollar value held has actually increased, from $33.68 million at the time of creation (ETH at $2.83) to $1 billion today (ETH at $2,500).

The blue line is the ETH balance, and the black line is the total USD value of ETH held.

The address with the largest increase in holdings: Unknown, but associated with the Ethereum Foundation

In addition, among the 8,893 addresses, the balances of more than 40 addresses have increased compared to the balance at the time of creation, and the address with the largest increase has increased by more than 30,000 ETH (now worth 75 million US dollars).

This address (0xddbd2b9…121a) received 10,000 ETH at the time of creation. A few days later, the unknown user transferred all the ETH to Kraken, perhaps to sell the ETH or provide liquidity. Then the address received a transfer of more than 80,000 ETH 10 days later, and then it was transferred out in batches (part of it went to the exchange), leaving about 40,000 ETH. The balance of this address has not changed since October 2015.

The 80,000 ETH received by this address actually came from the aforementioned EthDev. So a reasonable guess is that this user (institution) not only participated in the creation of Ethereum, but also had a deep connection with the Ethereum Foundation, perhaps a developer, an internal address of the Ethereum Foundation, an early investment institution, etc.

There is very little information about this address on the Internet, but it is probably not a coincidence that this address is used as a demonstration in the Etherscan developer documentation.