Golem raised $8.6M in 29 minutes in 2016. SingularDTV raised $7.5M in 17 minutes the month before. These ICOs shaped everything that came after.

Most people remember the 2017 ICO boom, but the culture started forming in late 2016 with projects like Golem and SingularDTV.

Golem (GNT) — November 11, 2016

Golem launched what was essentially an 820,000 ETH hard cap crowdsale. It filled in 29 minutes. $8.6 million for a decentralized computing network. The contract was deliberately simple by design. After the DAO hack a few months earlier, the team and their auditors at Zeppelin went out of their way to avoid complexity. No recursive calls, no token logic mixed with funding logic. Just "send ETH, receive tokens, done."

They also built in a migration mechanism from day one (GNT to GLM), which they actually used four years later in 2020. That kind of foresight was rare.

SingularDTV — September/October 2016

SingularDTV took a different approach with a tri-contract architecture: one for the crowdsale, one for the token, one for the treasury fund. Stefan George (who later cofounded Gnosis) was involved. They raised $7.5M in 17 minutes. The treasury contract had a 2-year workshop token lockup built in.

The speed of these raises changed expectations for every project that followed. Before this, "fast fundraising" for crypto meant days or weeks. After Golem and SingularDTV, everyone expected minutes.

Why this matters now

These contracts are still on-chain. You can read them, verify the logic, trace every transaction. Unlike web2 startup history where products get shut down and documentation disappears, Ethereum's history is permanently readable.

I've been documenting these early contracts at ethereumhistory.com — trying to build a proper archive before the people who remember this era move on. We've got about 40 contracts documented so far from 2015-2017.

If you were around during this period or remember other significant early contracts, would love to hear about them.