28 Nov 2018

Ok, this one comes quite late, considering the ICO market is practically dead.

But on the other hand, security tokens are coming (one of the first few is, for example, Iconomi) - but more about this in some other blog post.

In this blog post, we'll teach you how to create your own ERC-20 token.

You can use this knowledge to either start your own ICO, to do an airdrop or to use those tokens in some other way. An ICO is not the only way of making use of the tokens (hint: tokenization of everything is coming).

Let's see now how to create your own ERC-20 token in 3 easy steps.

Step 1: Install MetaMask

MetaMask is a nice plugin/extension for browsers that helps your browser communicate with the Ethereum network.

Go to https://metamask.io and install the extension on your favorite browser.

Make sure to securely store the seed words!

Step 2: Get yourself some Ether

In order to create a token smart contract, you'll need some Ether to pay for the transaction fees (referred to as "gas" in the Ethereum ecosystem).

Send some Ether to your MetaMask address. You can see it just below the "Account" title. If you click on it, you will automatically copy it so you can paste it in MyEtherWallet or somewhere else.

Alternatively, you can buy some Ether via MetaMask directly. You don't need much, just about $10 worth of Ether.

At first, we recommend you to create your tokens on the Ethereum test network (a.k.a. "testnet"), so you can test that everything works correctly before you start spending real Ether. Ethereum has three major testnets: Ropsten, Kovan, and Rinkeby. MetaMask allows you to switch between them in the upper row (where it says "Main Net"). If you'd like to get some test Ether (worth nothing, of course), go to the MetaMask faucet here: https://faucet.metamask.io. If you can't get any test Ether there, try googling for other Ether faucets for either Ropsten, Kovan or Rinkeby.

Step 3: Create your token contract

Go to Token Factory and click on Create new contract.

Fill in the following fields:

Total supply

Full token name

The number of decimal places (important: this will subtract the total supply number!)

Ticker

If you'd like to have a million tokens and 6 decimal places for the token, you have to enter 12 zeros in the Total supply field (1000000000000), so you account for the decimal places.

Also, fill in the desired token name and the ticker for it. Don't worry if some other token or coin already uses the same ticker. This won't prevent you from publishing the smart contract and using your token.

Click on the "Create Token" button. A dialog box from MetaMask will appear through which you'll submit the contract into the Ethereum blockchain and pay for the transaction costs.

Done!

Congrats! You have successfully deployed your smart contract to the Ethereum blockchain. It will stay there forever.

Click on the "Interact With Token Contract" tab on the Token Factory website. From here, you can interact with your smart contract. Use it to send some of the tokens to another Ethereum address.

You can also check the smart contract and the tokens on Etherscan. Note that the tokens might not be visible right away on your Ethereum address - Etherscan needs some time to refresh and show up the tokens. But you can speed up this process by sending the tokens to yourself (yes, a sending and a receiving address can be the same).

How to do a low-cost ICO

If you want to do an ICO as cheap as possible, follow these 6 steps:

Create your own token via the TokenFactory (as you already did). It will cost you less than $10. Create an ordinary ETH address for the token sale (the best would be to use one on a hardware wallet). Publish an ICO website and define the exchange ratio between ETH and your tokens. You can get a free website on Wix, Squarespace or Wordpress.com. Make sure to do an AML/KYC process. You'll have to do it manually if you'd like to save money. Give your investors your Ethereum address (from step 2) so they can send you their ETH. When you receive an ETH transaction, you have to manually send the appropriate amount of tokens to the sender's address.

This approach takes a lot more work than an automated token sale (via a special smart contract), but it's also cheaper if you do it yourself and you don't know how to code smart contracts.

Other uses of tokens

As we said at the beginning of the post, you can use tokens also for something else than just an ICO.

One option is a tokenization of real-world assets. Recently someone in Europe tokenized a parking place, which now has 19 owners from various countries.

Another prominent example of a tokenization is Maecenas, which tokenizes high art. Recently they announced a plan to tokenize an unspecified Picasso painting.



Pablo Picasso

Whatever you use your new tokens for, make sure you use them for something good and don't scam people. No need for a new Bitconnect. :D

The ICO card

One of the Crypto Cards is an ICO card. If you play it, you can select one of your opponents to give you one of their value cards.

If you happen to play a game of Crypto Cards, we wish you to get as many ICO cards as you can! :)