ERC721
Last updated
Last updated
We’ve discussed how you can make a fungible token using , but what if not all tokens are alike? This comes up in situations like real estate, voting rights, or collectibles, where some items are valued more than others, due to their usefulness, rarity, etc. ERC721 is a standard for representing ownership of , that is, where each token is unique.
ERC721 is a more complex standard than ERC20, with multiple optional extensions, and is split across a number of contracts. The OpenZeppelin Contracts provide flexibility regarding how these are combined, along with custom useful extensions. Check out the to learn more about these.
We’ll use ERC721 to track items in our game, which will each have their own unique attributes. Whenever one is to be awarded to a player, it will be minted and sent to them. Players are free to keep their token or trade it with other people as they see fit, as they would any other asset on the blockchain! Please note any account can call awardItem
to mint items. To restrict what accounts can mint items we can add .
Here’s what a contract for tokenized items might look like:
Also note that, unlike ERC20, ERC721 lacks a decimals
field, since each token is distinct and cannot be partitioned.
New items can be created:
And the owner and metadata of each item queried:
This tokenURI
should resolve to a JSON document that might look something like:
This contract is ready to deploy without having to write any Solidity code. It can be used as-is for quick prototyping and testing but is also suitable for production environments.
The contract is an implementation of ERC721 that includes the metadata standard extensions () as well as a mechanism for per-token metadata. That’s where the method comes from: we use it to store an item’s metadata.
For more information about the tokenURI
metadata JSON Schema, check out the .
A preset ERC721 is available, . It is preconfigured with token minting (creation) with token ID and URI auto generation, the ability to stop all token transfers (pause), and it allows holders to burn (destroy) their tokens. The contract uses to control access to the minting and pausing functionality. The account that deploys the contract will be granted the minter and pauser roles, as well as the default admin role.