# Why Are Token Standards Needed?

By [Crypto4light](https://paragraph.com/@crypto4light) · 2024-05-18

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Token standards are crucial because they guide developers on creating and using tokens within a particular blockchain protocol, ensuring compatibility and interoperability among products developed using the same standard.

### Token Standards

Token standards are essentially a set of agreed-upon rules that outline the design, development, behavior, and operation of cryptocurrency tokens on a specific blockchain protocol. For these standards to be effective, they must gain wide adoption. Without broad acceptance, these rules cannot be considered "standards" since standards are rules generally followed by a large community.

### Why Are Token Standards Needed?

1.  **Compatibility**: Token standards ensure that all products built using that standard can work together seamlessly.
    
2.  **Composability**: In programming, a composable system allows developers to reuse existing components to create new products, which is also applicable to token creation.
    
3.  **Efficiency**: Token standards enhance interoperability between smart contracts. When smart contracts follow token standards, they can manage all tokens on the network effectively.
    

### Common Token Standards

1.  **ERC-20**: The most popular token standard on Ethereum, allowing for the creation of fungible tokens. Examples include Shiba Inu, Tether, Uniswap, and ApeCoin.
    
2.  **BEP-20**: A token standard on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), sharing similar properties with ERC-20 due to their architectural similarities.
    
3.  **ERC-721**: This standard allows for the creation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum, used by many popular NFTs.
    
4.  **ERC-777**: An improved fungible token standard over ERC-20, providing enhanced privacy and addressing certain issues with ERC-20 tokens.
    
5.  **ERC-1155**: This standard helps reduce costs by allowing transactions to be grouped, and can be used for both fungible tokens like the Basic Attention Token and non-fungible tokens like CryptoPunks.
    

### Wrapped Tokens

Tokens on different blockchains typically cannot interact with each other. Wrapped tokens address this issue by representing assets on one blockchain in a form that can be used on another. For example, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) on the Ethereum blockchain is an ERC-20 token backed 1:1 by real Bitcoin. This allows WBTC holders to use Bitcoin within the Ethereum network for trading, farming, staking, and interacting with other ERC-20 tokens.

Token standards enable the use of diverse assets within the same blockchain, solving the problem of asset incompatibility and providing flexibility for the network.

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*Originally published on [Crypto4light](https://paragraph.com/@crypto4light/why-are-token-standards-needed)*