Sand & Trees
Sand & Trees (Dune of Pilat)

In the past I shared my thoughts about blockchain in gaming & collectibles, and particularly on how token formats for flexible consumer usages could unfortunately lead to fragmentation (e.g. on Ethereum the cases of different token’s types like ERC-20, ERC-223, ERC-721, ERC-1155, etc. are sometime difficult to manage for apps & wallets).

I further highlight here some aspects to consider for these kind of tokens (rough and high level checklist):

  • (non-)divisible
  • amount (units)
    • unique (NFT)
    • limited edition numbers
    • open, not (yet) locked vs. locked
  • attributes (characteristics)
    • additional info written within token on blockchain/contract(s)
    • link to parameters file or rich media (stored centralized vs decentralized, e.g. on another blockchain)
    • hash from parameters file or rich media
  • contracts
    • identified/authorized (restricted or not, e.g. black- or white-list)
  • features
    • identified/authorized
    • ownership
    • sending
    • swap
    • mass distribution (per wallet, as dividend)
    • trade orders: sell, buy (for DEX: units, price, period validity)
    • complex sell/buy, e.g. auction (unit & price as time function)
    • sell authorisation (for wallet): white-list (black-list)
    • (temporary) renting or sharing of tokens
  • group/family of tokens with sub-tokens
  • issuer, ownership (of group/family, of individual token), renter, co-sharer
  • usage by (d)apps
    • identified/authorized
    • etc

2 last points about interoperability from BGA (Blockchain Game Alliance):

So, my advice by defining tokens formats in a blockchain: check previous experiences and put in place something modular to cover all use cases.

[ this checklist is available for download in A4 PDF format here ]