ICO and ERC20 Token

Published: 2018-07-01 • Updated: 2018-07-09

What is ICO

ICO or Initial Coin Offering means publishing a token smart contract on Ethereum Blockchain.

These are fixed number of tokens which can be bough at an auction, fixed price etc from a fixed date. This token contract has to follow a standard interface which we call ERC20 Pattern.

ERC 20

ERC stands for Ethereum Request for Comments proposal which is a project containing Ethereum Improvement Proposals. Its 20th Ethereum request for comments is Standard Token Contract known as ERC20 Contract.
In nutshell, ERC20 Contract is standard set of functions for,

Keeping a track of how many tokens each address has
Transferring tokens from one address to another

Why to Standardize

Suppose we build our application to interact with an ERC20 Contract. Standardization of ERC20 contract facilitates our application to interact with any ERC20 contract. Hence, we can collect multiple varieties of tokens in our contract just by plugging in the new token contact address without any custom code.

Contract Interface

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ERC Token Standard #20 Interface
 https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20-token-standard.md
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
contract ERC20Interface {

  string public constant name = "Token Name";
  string public constant symbol = "SYM";
  uint8 public constant decimals = 18;

  function totalSupply() public constant returns (uint);
  function balanceOf(address tokenOwner) public constant returns (uint balance);
  function transfer(address to, uint tokens) public returns (bool success);
  function approve(address spender, uint tokens) public returns (bool success);
  function transferFrom(address from, address to, uint tokens) public returns (bool success);
  function allowance(address tokenOwner, address spender) public constant returns (uint remaining);
  event Transfer(address indexed from, address indexed to, uint tokens);
  event Approval(address indexed tokenOwner, address indexed spender, uint tokens);
}

Method Definition

function totalSupply() public constant returns (uint);

Returns Total Supply of Tokens available in Smart Contract.
Calling this function doesn't cost any Ether

function balanceOf(address tokenOwner) public constant returns (uint balance);

Returns the account balance of account with address tokenOwner
Calling this function doesn't cost any Ether

function transfer(address to, uint tokens) public returns (bool success);

Transfer tokens from Callers address to to address
Fire Transfer event on success.
Returns True for success

function approve(address spender, uint tokens) public returns (bool success);

We can approve spender to allow him to transfer token amount tokens from our address
Fire Approval event.

function transferFrom(address from, address to, uint tokens) public returns (bool success);

spender Account can go ahead (once approved) to transfer token from from address to to address
Fire Transfer event.

function allowance(address tokenOwner, address spender) public constant returns (uint remaining);

Returns amount which spender is still allowed to withdraw from tokenOwner
Calling this function doesn't cost any Ether

event Transfer(address indexed from, address indexed to, uint tokens);

Fire when tokens are successfully transferred.

event Approval(address indexed tokenOwner, address indexed spender, uint tokens);

Fire on successful call to approve.

ERC20 Token Variables

string public constant name = "Token Name"; Name of Token
string public constant symbol = "SYM"; Symbol of Token used by exchanges
uint8 public constant decimals = 18; Decimals give us room to spend fraction of a token.

References

BlockChain