Terra Nullius — The First NFT on Ethereum

**UPDATE It is no longer possible to mint off of the contract in the way described below. All 4,000 NFTs were claimed within an hour of this article being published.**

Sometimes as an NFT archeologist fate drops something into your lap that just makes you smile.

Tonight, fate came in the form of my good friend and fellow NFT archeologist Wilt Chamberlain who dug up what seems to be the very first NFT on the Ethereum blockchain.

I present to you Terra Nullius.

DISCLAIMER: Anything you do after this is 100% on you. Any lost funds, failed investments, or other unforeseen consequences are 100% on you. I am not responsible in any way. Turn away if you do not accept 100% responsibility.

Please read everything before proceeding and DYOR.

Main Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x6e38A457C722C6011B2dfa06d49240e797844d66

Wrapper Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x3a921bf2C96Cb60D49afF09110A9f836c295713a

The History

Based on this Reddit post it appears the project was built to allow you to stake your ‘claim’ on the blockchain.

When you staked your claim you got to write a short message (I am unsure of the maximum length) that let you customize the NFT.

22 NFTs were minted in 2015. While the dev minted an additional 23 today, and Wilt and I minted another 2 NFTs.

You can view mine here;-)

Clearly, the team behind the project recently built the wrapper to put the NFTs for sale on Opensea, you can see them here.

Minting Your Own

Now to be 100% clear — I am NOT encouraging you to mint NFTs off of this contract. They very well may be worthless.

I would think that the 22 NFTs minted in 2015 will be quite valuable, but I’ll leave that for the market to decide.

For now, here are the steps if you want to mint your own NFT from this contract.

Step 1: Go here: https://etherscan.io/address/0x3a921bf2C96Cb60D49afF09110A9f836c295713a#writeContract

Step 2: Click the ‘Connect to Web3’ and follow the step to connect your MetaMask

Step 3: Click on ‘2.Mint’

Step 4: Type the message that you want to write in the box

Step 5: Click ‘Write’. The transaction only costs gas.

IMPORTANT: If your gas is more than $200, ‘Reject’ the transaction in MetaMask and try again. The high gas cost is MetaMask’s way of telling you that the listing you are trying to claim has already been purchased. Failure to ‘Reject’ the transaction may result in you losing your ETH.

Step 6: If the transaction is successful you should see your NFT show up on Opensea in about 15 minutes. Enjoy!

Note that Wilt tells me that 4,000 is the maximum number of NFTs that can be written on the wrapper contract.