What is ERC20?

ERC20 is a protocol standard that defines certain rules and standards for issuing tokens on Ethereum’s network. In ‘ERC20’, ERC stands for Ethereum Request For Comments and 20 stands for a unique ID number to distinguish this standard from others.

The Ethereum community created these standards with three optional rules, and six mandatory.

Optional Rules

• Token Name
• Symbol
• Decimal (up to 18)

Mandatory Rules

• totalSupply
• balanceOf
• transfer
• transferFrom
• approve
• allowance

Things needed to get started

• MetaMask or www.myetherwallet.com
• Remix IDE (http://remix.ethereum.org)
• Ropsten Testnet
• Get some test Ether (https://faucet.ropsten.be)
• https://ropsten.etherscan.io/

Sample ERC20 Contract Code