[Blockchain knowledge] Quickly understand Ethereum's ERC and EIP

Recognize the benefits of the Ethereum base protocol

Since the most commonly used blockchain for developing smart contracts is Ethereum, it is often seen that many emerging public chains will be additionally named "EVM" compatible, which probably means "the blocks we develop. The chain can also use the standard of Ethereum to run, your existing programs can be put on the blockchain without modification, please come and use it!”, the advantage of this is that the developers of Ethereum can use the same code, jump to that blockchain with a very low conversion cost and play. When developers start to own their own ecology on the new chain, the blockchain will start to have different uses. These subordinates If the application on the blockchain can successfully attract new users to join, if there are many people who come and the crowd brings money, the new blockchain can flourish.

Under this premise, for those who want to start learning about blockchain and smart contracts, it will be very cost-effective to understand some basic definitions of Ethereum, because even if one day you have to leave the Ethereum ecosystem to Other blockchains, many blockchains can use the Ethereum code to let us continue to play, and this knowledge can be carried away.

In this article, we will mention what EIP is, what its types are, and what the so-called ERC token protocol is. If you issue your own tokens or NFTs on the Internet (such as: Ethereum, BNB chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum...), then a general understanding of EIP and ERC will be required homework. After understanding these basic things, know how to Where to find relevant specifications and use it will help program development.

Definition and three types of EIP

If you have a further understanding of the blockchain, you may have heard of ERC-20, ERC-721 and the like, and the corresponding proposals are EIP-20 and EIP-721 .

This refers to the standard protocol defined by Ethereum. It is like when we go to government agencies or bank post offices to apply for something, these units will first define a set of application standards, and when applying, they will tell What documents do we need to provide, or which form fields do we need to fill out to complete the application. It is the same for us to issue tokens, as long as it is set according to the format defined by Ethereum, anyone can issue their own tokens on it, and everyone can recognize it!

The full name of EIP is Ethereum Improvement Proposal, which is an improvement proposal of Ethereum, which is used to describe some new functions or new designs in Ethereum. The advent of anything is unlikely to be perfect from the beginning, so Ethereum provided EIP when it was established so that everyone can come up to propose improvements. The proposer of EIP needs to be responsible for the writing of relevant documents, including the basic operation principle of a new function. , technical specifications and uses, etc., so that everyone can reach a consensus in the community. If the proposal is accepted by the Ethereum Foundation, the code name of EIP will be generated and become part of Ethereum.

The original EIP-1 file was evolved with reference to the BIP originally created by Bitcoin. It defines the public format that people who want to propose later need to attach. It is mentioned that EIP is mainly divided into three types, respectively. as follows:

1. Standard Track

Standard Track EIP can be said to be the most important file of Ethereum. According to the description of the official document, it contains four major items: Core, Networking, Interface, and ERC.

It will roughly include some new functions related to the core development of Ethereum, network protocols, transaction rules, application standards and interface definitions. Even the tokens or NFTs we usually use are derived from ERC. So it is classified in the Standard Track EIP!

2. Meta

Meta EIP seems to be more inclined to some improvement proposals for Ethereum's internal processes and SOPs, or the process of how to use some new functions after they are launched. For example, the original EIP-1 of Ethereum belongs to this category. It defines the submission format of EIP, how to review after submission, etc., and makes a flow chart of the proposal.

3. Informational

Informational EIP is a kind of information for everyone's reference or like a guidebook for some Ethereum design, it will not be a new feature (because new features should be listed in the other two categories above), so it can be The EIP is conceived as a suggestion to use something, not a very important type of EIP, for reference by the user community.

These are probably what EIP is doing. If you want to see more, you can refer to the official website of Ethereum EIP, where you can see more EIP proposals. The website is: https://eips.ethereum.org/

ERC standard

As mentioned earlier, ERC belongs to Standard Track EIP under EIP. The full name is Ethereum Request for Comments. It is not a technology or code, but defines a protocol specification or a set of smart contract standards, which is like our daily life. All the things in it need to set standard specifications, including whether the home appliance socket is 110V or 220V, the mobile phone charging port has Micro-B, Type-C or Apple's Lighting, etc., then you will know that the definition of specifications is very important, Everyone develops the same standard uniformly, and the developed products can be used interchangeably, reducing switching costs.

The idea of issuing tokens for smart contracts is similar. What content a token should contain will be defined according to the ERC, and developers should study what are the public specifications and write them in their own contracts, so that When our token is to be used after development, because other people know this standard, they don't need to spend time browsing your code to understand how to call it.

At present, there are 27 ERCs that have passed the review and entered the Final stage, including the most common tokens we see are ERC-20 standard , NFT is ERC-721 standard , NFT suitable for GameFi is ERC-1155 standard , and recently updated , the ERC-4626 standard for DeFi. In the next article, I want to talk more about our most common ERC token protocols and their special features. I hope that after reading it, you will be able to understand Ethereum. These Tokens and NFTs on the website have a further understanding!

For more detailed proposal content, please refer to the official document at: https://eips.ethereum.org/erc

Further reading

At the beginning of this year, we also studied how to issue our own tokens on the blockchain, and finally issued a free airdrop of "Technology Coin, ITC" to readers, which is based on a standard protocol on Ethereum ERC- 20 For tokens issued on the Polygon sidechain, if you want to know more about how to issue tokens, you can refer to the following articles:
[New Year's Plan] Red Packet Coins for Chinese New Year | Smart Contract Development Plan #1
【Airdrop Rewards】Technology Essay Readers Feedback | Free Tech Coins

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