eth_getCode

eth_getCode returns the EVM bytecode deployed at an address on Polygon PoS (chain ID 137), the high-throughput EVM-equivalent network where MATIC is the gas token. Because Polygon hosts the same contracts as Ethereum — Aave, QuickSwap, the canonical USDC and USDT bridges — this call is the quickest way to tell whether an address is a smart contract or a plain externally owned account, and to grab the exact bytecode running at a chosen block. Point the request at https://polygon.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY and it answers with hex-encoded bytecode, or 0x when nothing is deployed there.

Use cases

• Tell contract accounts from EOAs: a 0x result means no code, anything longer means a deployed contract — handy before treating a Polygon address as an Aave pool or QuickSwap router.
• Confirm a freshly deployed contract matches the bytecode you expected after broadcasting the creation transaction on Polygon.
• Detect proxy contracts by spotting minimal-proxy (EIP-1167) clone patterns or reading the EIP-1967 implementation slot, common across Polygon DeFi deployments.
• Audit whether a contract had been self-destructed by an earlier block by querying eth_getCode at that historical height.

Parameters

Response

Example request

1curl https://polygon.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
4  -d '{
5    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
6    "method": "eth_getCode",
7    "params": [
8        "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
9        "latest"
10      ],
11    "id": 1
12  }'

Try it live in the Polygon playground.

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• A 0x result is ambiguous: it means the same thing for a never-used EOA and for a contract that was self-destructed — code absence alone does not tell the two cases apart.
• For proxy contracts you get the proxy's own bytecode, not the implementation behind it; resolve the EIP-1967 slot with eth_getStorageAt to find the logic contract.
• Querying eth_getCode at an old Polygon block requires an archive node; a pruned full node returns a missing-trie-node error for historical state.

Supported networks

• Mainnet — Chain ID: 137
• Amoy — Chain ID: 80002

See also

• eth_getStorageAt
• eth_getProof
• eth_call
• eth_getBalance

1curl https://polygon.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_getCode","params":["0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",""]}'