A developer tackles a challenge to create the smallest invokable Soroban smart contract on Stellar mainnet, beating the previous 66-byte record by using an empty export name. The solution shrinks the WASM binary to 39 bytes including the required metadata section. Mainnet transaction hashes are provided for upload and invocation.
Inspired by a Christmas challenge from kalepail in the Stellar Developer Discord, FredericRezeau optimized a Soroban contract that simply returns i64.const 2. The key insight was using an empty string for the function export name, reducing the export section by one byte per WASM spec allowances. After discovering the mandatory 32-byte 'contractenvmetav0' metadata section, the final binary totals 39 bytes. WAT code, binary hex, and mainnet transaction hashes for upload and three invocations are shared. A JavaScript snippet demonstrates direct WAT-to-binary conversion and empty-string contract calls. The post links to GitHub code and celebrates creative constraints in Soroban development.
