# MistCoin ($WMC)

> The first ERC-20 token prototype, deployed by the Ethereum team on November 3, 2015 — 16 days before the ERC-20 standard was proposed.

## Key Facts

- **Deployed:** November 3, 2015 (Block #424,961)
- **Deployed by:** The Ethereum Mist team (Fabian Vogelsteller, Alex Van de Sande)
- **ERC-20 proposed:** November 19, 2015 (16 days after MistCoin)
- **Original contract:** 0xf4eCEd2f682CE333f96f2D8966C613DeD8fC95DD
- **Wrapped contract (WMC):** 0x7Fd4d7737597E7b4ee22AcbF8D94362343ae0a79
- **Total supply:** 1,000,000 MC (2 decimals)
- **Chain:** Ethereum mainnet
- **Ticker:** $WMC (Wrapped MistCoin)

## What is MistCoin?

MistCoin was deployed by the Ethereum Foundation's Mist team as a prototype to test standardized token creation. The Mist Browser (Ethereum's official dApp browser) shipped a "Custom Tokens" feature in Wallet Beta 3 (October 30, 2015), and MistCoin was deployed as the reference token for that feature. Sixteen days later, Vitalik Buterin and Fabian Vogelsteller formally proposed the ERC-20 standard (EIP-20), which codified the token interface that MistCoin had already implemented.

## Why is MistCoin historically significant?

Every ERC-20 token on Ethereum — hundreds of thousands of tokens representing hundreds of billions of dollars in value — follows the standard that MistCoin prototyped. MistCoin is the oldest surviving token that implements the core ERC-20 interface (balanceOf, transfer, Transfer event).

## Key People

- **Fabian Vogelsteller** — Lead Ethereum dApp developer, co-author of ERC-20 (EIP-20), built the Mist Browser and deployed MistCoin
- **Alex Van de Sande (avsa)** — Head of UX at Ethereum Foundation, co-built the Mist Browser
- **Vitalik Buterin** — Co-author of ERC-20 (EIP-20), began proposing token standards on the Ethereum Wiki in June 2015

## Primary Sources

- Deployment transaction: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x2f71e0e68bc4e25e23a68b737d29f0e4a5a7c881e4aae81bfb37e0e3e2ef9d00
- Original contract on Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/address/0xf4eCEd2f682CE333f96f2D8966C613DeD8fC95DD
- ERC-20 proposal (EIP-20): https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20
- Fabian's GitHub wiki commits: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/commits?author=frozeman
- Vitalik's Standardized Contract APIs wiki: https://web.archive.org/web/20170507171420/https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Standardized_Contract_APIs
- Ethereum Foundation blog post on custom tokens: https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/12/03/how-to-build-your-own-cryptocurrency
- Mist Browser Beta 3 release: https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases/tag/0.3.5

## Website

- Homepage: https://www.mistcoineth.com
- Origin Checker (compare any token to MistCoin): https://www.mistcoineth.com/origin-checker
- Mist Browser Simulator: https://www.mistcoineth.com/mist-simulator
- Full documentation: https://www.mistcoineth.com/llms-full.txt
- Token List (Uniswap standard): https://www.mistcoineth.com/tokenlist.json