What Are ERC Token Standards?

Here’s a cool guide by Chief R&D Officer at 482.solutions Alexander Ivanov about both: classic and most popular ERC token standards.

Why do we need token standards? In short, Ethereum is a decentralized platform on which smart contracts have been successfully operating since 2015, and their algorithms are written in the Solidity programming language. Ethereum Platform became a springboard for the blockchain industry development because it has given life to thousands of new projects and decentralized applications with their tokens.

ERC (Ethereum Request for Comments) token standards are designed to achieve specific goals in specific application types. Each of them has its own characteristics, functionality, and capabilities. ERC-20 has become a classic of its kind, and the ERC-223, ERC-721, ERC-777 and ERC-1155 standards are also very popular. In this article, we will deal with each of them, learn their features and scope.

ERC-20 Standard Tokens

It is worth starting with ERC.jpg" alt="What Are ERC Token Standards?" />Separate attention deserves the latest Ethereum ERC-1155 token standard. The fact is that this standard was created to solve a variety of problems faced by both developers and users of blockchain games.

First of all, it solves the main issues of online games – secure items purchase/sale/exchange and uniqueness.

As an example, to prove the necessity of applying this standard, you can imagine a game where you are an elf, but you have found a very valuable item, for example, a warrior’s weapon. If this weapon is a blockchain asset, then you have the opportunity to exchange this item in another game that supports the ERC-1155 standard.

Thus, any game item can have its own characteristics in the form of damage, resilience, protection, etc., and also have their own value (like ERC20 tokens).

ERC-1155 also simplified the items sending, as it allows the simultaneous transaction of several digital items.

Thanks to ERC-1155, the gaming industry sees a safe future on the horizon, where players can conveniently, quickly, and honestly transfer and sell their digital assets.

An interesting question is maturing: can this standard come in handy in a different, non-gaming environment?

Theoretically, the ERC-1155 functions could be great for trading when there are many different products with different characteristics involved in the process.

However, before that, ERC-1155 should be run-in in the virtual world, and most game dev representatives have no doubt about it since its possibilities are capable of reshaping the relations between the parties that don`t trust each other and help to forget about the deceptions that are now often found in MMO games.

Conclusion

The Ethereum Platform is constantly growing and evolving. Every month developers from around the world post new smart contract codes describing thousands of new tokens on GitHub. Nobody can say that they are all good, however, by separating the wheat from the chaff, ERCs are able to pump our world.