Creating ‘BoetCoin’ an ERC20 Ethereum Based Cryptocurrency

Even more hooked on Crypto learning than i was at the start of the year, I have recently started learning how to create tokens on the Ethereum protocol, given my interest in how crypto works and this has been a fascinating journey. This post will speak to some of the key things that I have learnt while doing this. I can confidently say that this coin now sits on the Ethereum block chain and will be there forever. Click the address to see the block explorer. Its live on the Rinkby Testnet. 🙂

Contract address – 0xfAf964999503bf61144EFc96D48C11bC4d6dfC99

Lets get into – ERC-20 STANDARD TOKENS

ERC stands for Ethereum Request for Comment and the number relates to the number in the list of proposals put to the Eth community. In short, the ERC20 standard emerged as the technical standard used for all smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain for token implementation, in other words the standard to apply when making new coins. Just like a banking standard and rules that would need to be followed. However true to form, we are dealing with nerds here, each standard has a flavour.

• Vanilla is a simple ERC-20 implementation, for standards-compliant tokens on Ethereum. It is focused on Gas Saving transactions.
• Pistachio is an advanced set of interfaces, contracts, and utilities that implement a Standard Ethereum Token, focused on security.
• Chocolate is an advanced set of interfaces, contracts, and utilities that implement a Standard Ethereum Token, focused on security and also adds an extra level of advanced features.

The ERC-20 Standard include how the tokens can be transferred, how transactions are approved, how users can access data about a token, and the total supply of tokens. All of which are totally transparent to the individual holder and can be verified by anyone with the inclination.

THE ICO – INITIAL COIN OFFERING AND THE ECONOMICS

The Initial Coin Offering – this was a fun one. This is the process whereby people get the first set of coins that are issues on the smart contract, how does this work I hear you say? Let me explain: The smart contract sits there on the blockchain in public for anyone to see, if they have the address. In order to create tokens, a user/buyer would send Eth to the contract, like you would if you were paying anyone else. However, once the contract receives the eth, new Boetcoin are created and are deposited against that senders address. In this instance:

1 ETH = 100 Boetcoin

The smart contract does all of the ‘work’ with zero possibility of me changing this in the future. This is the idea of immutability and tamper proof code that resides on the blockchain. So the sender gets their Boetcoin added to the list of tokens against their address and anyone who sends ETH can get. Smart contracts can come in much more complex forms but this was the start for me. Note all of this was done with test ETH. At this stage BOETCOIN has no value but I may want to add this to Uniswap at some point to see what actually happens. Note to self, write something about Uniswap.

THE CODE

As with all smart contract code this was written in Solidity (just learning more about this) which is a contract-oriented, high-level language for writing smart contracts. I am told it was influenced by C++, Python and JavaScript and is designed to target the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Written and deployed using gas. Solidity is statically typed, supports inheritance, libraries and complex user-defined types among other features. In this instance a very simple template was used to write this all down. A link to the code for the BoetCoin Smart Contract can be found here.

SOME INTERESTING COIN DETAILS

WHAT MADE THIS INTERESTING?

• I needed no ones permission to create this coin.
• It cost me the time it took to learn to code it.
• Should this have been for monetary purposes, I could have raised ETH directly from contributors who believed in this coins utility. There could be no limit.

I am looking very forward to exploring this part of the ‘infinite machine’ further with other implementations and ideas around the usage of smart contracts. There is so much more to explore with this DeFi space moving at a million miles an hour.