Ethereum EIP process
ERC-20: Token Standard
ERC-20
- Authority
- F, Protocol specification or contract frameworkNormative only within its ecosystem
- Maturity
- M1, Published and stableCurrent normative or released artifact; still requires implementation due diligence
- Version
- Native status: Final at cutoff
- Jurisdiction
- Ethereum ecosystem
One of twelve records open without an account, chosen to span every class of authority so the classification can be judged before anybody signs in.
What it does
Homogeneous fungible balances, transfers and allowances
Implementation
Protocol/interface specification
What it does not do
No legal rights, compliance, lifecycle or settlement; non-standard return behavior and allowance races require defensive integration
This is the field that matters. Most failures here are a standard asked to carry something it was never written for, and the resulting gap is discovered in production.
Where it applies
Layers, the questions it helps answer
- L5
Token representation and contract interfaces
How are balances, positions, partitions, vaults and privileges expressed?
Phases, when in the life of an instrument
- P0
Design time
legal classification, authority-of-record map, product archetype, standards shortlist
- P1
Build time
schemas, interfaces, mappings, adapters, rules, invariants and test plans
- P2
Issuance and deployment
identifiers, contracts, roles, registries, modules, documents and configuration manifest
- P3
Runtime preflight
signature, identity, eligibility, freeze, balance, NAV, oracle and route checks
- P4
Atomic execution
state transition, transfer, mint, burn, lock, settlement or message dispatch
- P5
Lifecycle servicing
calculations, corporate actions, payments, queues, elections and reconciliation
EVMrepresentationfungible
How it composes with others
Direction matters and is preserved. A conflict is not a warning about quality; it means the two cannot both hold without an adapter or a design change.
Extended by ERC-3643: T-REX permissioned tokenERC-3643
T-REX remains ERC-20-compatible while adding identity and compliance architecture.
Source and terms of use
- Primary source
- https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20
- Licence and access
- EIP repository terms; implementation licenses separate
- Last verified
- 2026-08-15, primary source verified
The Institute links to and describes primary sources; it does not reproduce their normative text. Several of these documents are copyrighted and cannot be redistributed, and the licence note above is the record’s own statement of its terms, not a grant. Status is reported as observed at 2026-08-15 in catalogue release 1.0.0 and must be revalidated before use. Nothing here is legal, regulatory, accounting, tax, investment, security-audit or production-readiness advice, and neither a published status nor an open implementation is a regulatory approval or a certification.