A: What the hell..?
B: Easy man. This is the famous ERC-20 token standard in the world of Ethereum, which is the game rule of creating, transferring a coin other than ETH.
A: Oh, interesting.
A: Why don’t you explain more about ERC?
B: ERC is short for “Ethereum Request for Comments”, which is used to record various application-level standards and conventions on Ethereum. You can view it as a contact temple in the real world. If you were in trouble and come to find your lawyer, your lawyer listen to your complaint and then take some paper out of her drawer according to your problems. ERCs are pretty much like the papers. People in the world of ethereum have different demands and then drafted those ERCs to the network of eth.
A: I see. So what kind of demand would they have, and how they actually “draft” them?
B: Great question. As the above pic shows, ERC-20 is the instruction of how coins on eth network are created, transferred, and checked in your wallet. This is important because lots of applications on the ethereum network need to issue a new coin to support their own apps. And coins as being allowed to list in centralized crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, coin holders can exchange their crypto coins for fiat currency.
A: It is pretty much like a promoting — people use the application and get reward coins for exchanging for fiat currencies!
B: Yes, you are right. As for “drafting” ERCs, every developer in the ethereum network is entitled to propose a new ERC. But it takes some time for eth society to check bugs and get accepted.
A: I heard about a similar word “EIP”, is there any difference between “ERC”? Any relations?
B: Yes. “EIP” stands for Ethereum Improvement Proposals. It is an improvement proposal put forward by the Ethereum developer community. It is a series of documents scheduled by number. “EIP” includes “ERC” as the following map shows:
B: As the pic shows, EIPs are a kind of wider “regulations” than ERCs, which are designed for border governance over the eth network. Thus, it is more Influential. Anyone within the Ethereum community can create an EIP.
A: I see. It looks like some supporting stuff under eth network can be changed through “EIP”.
B: Yes, you are right.
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