🔌 What is ERC-20?
Why is it the most important 'invisible rule' of Ethereum $ETH ?
Before diving into technical terms, let me ask you a question👇
If all the electrical appliances in your home had different plug shapes, wouldn't you go crazy?
1️⃣ Early Ethereum $ETH was truly chaotic
At the beginning👇
Each token was a 'custom plug'
Wallets / exchanges wanting to support a new token 👉 had to rewrite code from scratch
The ecosystem couldn't scale.
2️⃣ ERC-20 did something seemingly small but fate-changing
It said one thing👇
All tokens on Ethereum must support these basic functions.
As a result👇
Wallets could support all tokens with one codebase
Exchanges could integrate all tokens with a single interface
DeFi became possible.
3️⃣ Why are you vulnerable to 'approvals' theft today? The root is here
ERC-20 specifies👇
You can authorize others to transfer your tokens on your behalf
Protocols complete actions via 'withdrawal'
This enabled DeFi, but also became a source of security breaches.
4️⃣ What if there were no ERC-20?
No Uniswap
No lending
No liquidity pools
No 'on-chain finance' as we know it today
✨ One-sentence summary
ERC-20 didn't make you rich, but it enabled all tokens to circulate in the same ecosystem. This is the true foundational rule of Ethereum $ETH .
