HOKIE: The difference between erC-20 and ERC-721

The term "ERC-20", which we often see in industry media reports, is a standard agreement on Ethereum. Apart from ERC-20, the other agreement on Ethereum that more people have heard of is ERC-721.

Although they have heard of it, many people still don't know what the two agreements are and how to distinguish them. Today, vernacular block chain will give you a comb.

What are erC-20 and ERC-721?

First of all, we will briefly introduce what erC-20 and ERC-721 are.

1, ERC - 20

Erc-20 is the most widely known standard, there is no distinction of value in ERC-20, tokens are interchangeable. That's like saying that your $100 "money" is the same as my $100 "money" under ERC-20.

The ERC-20 standard specifies that the Token must have its name, symbol, total supply, and other functions including money transfer and remittance. The benefit of this standard is that as long as the Token complies with the ERC-20 standard, it will be compatible with the Ethereum wallet. That is, you can add the Token to your Ethereum wallet and send it to others through your wallet.

The ERC-20 standard makes it easy to issue tokens. Currently, there are more than 180,000 ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.

2, ERC - 721

If ERC-20 is so powerful, why is there an erC-721 standard? The aforementioned erC-20 Token distinction has no value and is no longer applicable to assets that require unique attributes, such as crypto collectibles and game items.

The ERC-721 standard specifies that each Token that meets its standard has a unique Token ID. In the ERC-721 standard, each Token is unique. In other words, under ERC-721, your $100 "money" is not the same as my $100 "money" because the two $100 bills are numbered differently.

How to distinguish THE ER-20 from the ERC-721?

Let me just give you an example. Let's say there's a virtual pet app on the blockchain with 100 cats. If the app's Token is developed based on the ERC-20 standard and we both happen to have a cat at the same time, then your cat is the same as my cat, and the cat Token is divisible, for example, by dividing it into 10 pieces, then each is 0.1 Token.

If the app's Token is developed based on the ERC-721 standard, then your cat and my cat are no longer the same anyway, because our cat IDS are different and the cat as a whole is not divisible and unique.

From this example, we can see two differences between erC-20 Token and ERC-721 Token:

1. Erc-20 tokens are valueless and interchangeable; Erc-721 tokens are not interchangeable and each Token has a unique ID.

2. The ERC-20 Token is divisible, while the ERC-721 Token is not.