# The ERC-20 Standard

The erc-20 standard is the default API for creating and managing tokens within EVM-compatible smart contracts.

## What are Tokens?

Tokens can represent virtually anything:

* reputation points in an online platform
* skills of a character in a game
* financial assets like a share in a company
* a fiat currency like USD
* an ounce of gold

Example functionalities the ERC-20 standard provides:

* transfer tokens from one account to another
* get the current token balance of an account
* get the total supply of the token available on the network
* approve whether an amount of token from an account can be spent by a third-party account

If a Smart Contract implements the following methods and events it can be called an ERC-20 Token Contract and, 
once deployed, it will be responsible to keep track of the created tokens onchain.

## references

https://build.avax.network/docs/dapps/smart-contract-dev/erc-20-token

https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc-20/

https://github.com/IanoNjuguna/EIPs