Removing contract to release RAM - the smallest contract possible

Question

Check our github https://github.com/irespo/irespo/tree/master/irespo/iresporemove I did a sample contract with one empty action, but it is still 30 KB. I tried a contract without action, but did not work. Anyone has ideas how to optimize it?

Answer 1

Update 19th September: As of v1.3.0, it is now possible to delete the smart contract from an account using the --clear flag ($ cleos set contract <account> --clear)

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To make a small contract, I suggest not using cpp or eosiocpp/eosio-cpp at all. The smallest contract I managed to upload on chain takes 0.392 KiB and it's written in webassembly:

contract.wast

(module
 (export "apply" (func $apply))
 (func $apply (param $0 i64) (param $1 i64) (param $2 i64))
)

contract.abi

{
  "____comment": "",
  "version": "eosio::abi/1.0",
  "types": [],
  "structs": [],
  "actions": [],
  "tables": [],
  "ricardian_clauses": [],
  "error_messages": [],
  "abi_extensions": []
}

Use wat2wasm binary from here to convert the wast file into a wasm binary that will take up 38 bytes. When you upload it on the chain, 38 bytes * 10 = 0.38 KB which is a decrease of almost 99% in size and costs from 30KB.