Ethereum Ghosts

These are old Ethereum contracts whose dapps are gone but whose code still answers. Each story is told by a local open-weight model from code-verified facts.

Age

Sort

friendlyFell silent years ago; no fatal wounds.
lingeringThe dapp died, but people still knock.
badA serious wound: confirmed by Slither or an incident, else suspected.
banishedSelf-destructed; only a gravestone is left.
aliveStill in real use, so not really a ghost.
scarredMedium-impact findings: scars, not a death sentence.
never calledDeployed, then nobody ever knocked.

About

Built for the Hacktoberfest 2026 “Ghost in the Machine” challenge.

The stories are written at runtime by Gemma 4 on the author’s Mac, an open-weight model running locally. Every date, number and name the model writes must exist in the facts, or the sentence is repaired or dropped.

The data comes from online services: Ethereum History, Blockscout, Sourcify, a public Ethereum RPC and the Internet Archive. The model is local; the sources are not. Ghosts from 2018 onward have no historian prose. Vulnerability verdicts are “suspected” unless Slither or a documented incident backs them up.

Built for the Día de los Muertos spirit of the challenge: remembering what was built, and by whom, before it fell silent.

Special Thanks

Ethereum History: this project uses its REST API and MCP server for the archive of old contracts, their birth facts, decompiled code and the historians’ notes.

Sound Effects:

Music track: Haunted House by Aetheric
Source: https://freetouse.com/music
Scream Sound Effect by Jusatti890 from Pixabay
Ghost Woo Sound Effect by Ghostie Graves from Pixabay

Source code: HacktoberFest2026 / challenges / 05-week4-ghost-in-the-machine · MIT license