What is an ERC-20 token?
ERC-20 is one of the most significant ERCs.ERC-20 is a standard or guideline for creating new tokens. It has emerged as the technical standard for writing smart contracts migration on the Ethereum blockchain network, used for token implementation. ERC-20 contains a set of rules that all Ethereum based tokens must follow.
Creating our own token.
Now that we know what ERC 20 token are and how they work, let’s see how we can build and deploy our own token.
We’ll deploy our contract on the Ropsten testnet.
What is the ERC-20 token?
First of all, a token is a cryptographic unit or “chip” that has no legal value, so it is not considered a cryptocurrency. As such, it does not have a blockchain network of its own, but instead lives within one.
It is used to execute transactions that are not 100% monetary within a Blockchainx, an example could be its presence in smart contracts, shares, certificates or points.
The ERC-20 token responds to the acronym "Ethereum Request for Comments" and is a standard within the network to promote the interoperability of DApps and projects.
All smart contracts must follow its 6 regulations plus 3 optional to work:
The 6 mandatory commands are:
- Total Supply : Indicate how many tokens each direction has
- Balance of (Balance): Indicates how many tokens a given address has.
- Approve : Tells the contract how many tokens the smart contract can release to a user.
- Transfer (transfer): takes this amount that allows the “approve” function and releases it to the end user.
- Allowance : checks that the number of tokens to be sent actually exists and the shipment can be executed.
- Transfer Form : Manages the transfer of tokens between users.
The 3 optional are:
- All tokens must have a name.
- All tokens must have a symbol.
- All tokens must have the amount by which they can be divided.
Ethereum has hundreds and thousands of tokens, which represent different DApps, being an open source network, everyone has the power to create, but what if two different applications wanted to join? They would have had to carefully program their structure to be interoperable with the other, or if they already existed, they would have to program an alternative to connect them.
And what about those projects where they would join more? It would be too much work, which is why Ethereum created a standard token for all these DApps to be internally and externally compatible.
Thanks to the ERC-20 token, through a smart contract, many companies and projects can now be integrated without having to make major changes to the source code, allowing and facilitating the creation of products and offers to the market.
