Issue your own token (ERC20)

We have pre-built a template for this tutorial hosted on near.dev called "Token Contract in AssemblyScript". You can try running the application right away to see the code interacting with the blockchain — just click Open in Gitpod.

In this tutorial we’ll build this application from scratch.

heads up

The intention of this tutorial is to get you up to speed as quickly as possible on the platform but please be aware that *AssemblyScript is recommended for non-financial use cases only*.

ERC-20 standard

The ERC-20 standard is one of Ethereum‘s most popular standards. It defines how custom tokens should be built. This is the same standard which was used to issue most of the ICOs in 2017 and 2018.

Specifically, any new token must follow next interface:

• totalSupply(): uint256 – View function that returns the total token supply.
• balanceOf(owner: address): uint256 – View function that returns the account balance of another account with address owner.
• transfer(to: address, value: uint256) – Send value amount of tokens to address to.
• transferFrom(from: address, to: address, value: uint256) – Send value amount of tokens from address from to address to.
• approve(spender: address, value: uint256) – Allow spender to withdraw from your account, multiple times, up to the value amount. If this function is called again it overwrites the current allowance with value
• allowance(owner: address, spender: address): uint256 – View function, returns the amount which spender is still allowed to withdraw from owner.

Note, NEAR currently doesn’t have native uint256/uint128 so for this tutorial we going to use u64. The support is coming in a few weeks.

You can read the official ERC-20 Token Standard here.

Building basic token

If you haven’t done so already …

In a new browser tab or window

• Open Examples

• Select "Token Contract in AssemblyScript"

• Click Open in gitpod

Let’s start by defining number of tokens (non-divisible units) our token will have. This is a decision point for the developer, and here we will assume we going to have 1,000,000.

This way we can implement totalSupply function:

In the file assembly/main.ts

• You will find the following lines of code
  (note: there may be other code and comments in the file as well)

let balances = new PersistentMap<string, u64>("b:");
let approves = new PersistentMap<string, u64>("a:");

let TOTAL_SUPPLY: u64 = 1000000;

export function totalSupply(): string {
  return TOTAL_SUPPLY.toString();
}

The PersistentMap is needed to keep track of the current and previously recorded balances and approvals.

We also need some way to initialize our contract to award all these tokens to initial owner. This also goes into how to change storage in the smart contract.

Also in the same file assembly/main.ts

• You will find the following lines of code
  (note: there may be other code and comments in the file as well)

export function init(initialOwner: string): void {
  logging.log("initialOwner: " + initialOwner);
  assert(storage.get<string>("init") == null, "Already initialized token supply");
  balances.set(initialOwner, TOTAL_SUPPLY);
  storage.set<string>("init", "done");
}

In example above we have a storage object that is accessible by this contract to store data. It’s just a key-value storage. You can see the full implementation of the Storage class in the near-sdk-as source here.

Now that it’s initialized, we can check the balance of users.

Also in the same file assembly/main.ts

• You will find the following lines of code
  (note: there may be other code and comments in the file as well)

export function balanceOf(tokenOwner: string): u64 {
  logging.log("balanceOf: " + tokenOwner);
  if (!balances.contains(tokenOwner)) {
    return 0;
  }
  let result = balances.getSome(tokenOwner);
  return result;
}

Let’s build harder part, transferring money from current user to somebody else.

Also in the same file assembly/main.ts

• You will find the following lines of code
  (note: there may be other code and comments in the file as well)

export function transfer(to: string, tokens: u64): boolean {
  logging.log("transfer from: " + context.sender + " to: " + to + " tokens: " + tokens.toString());
  let fromAmount = balanceOf(context.sender);
  assert(fromAmount >= tokens, "not enough tokens on account");
  balances.set(context.sender, fromAmount - tokens);
  balances.set(to, balanceOf(to) + tokens);
  return true;
}

Note, this is not a view function and it can fail, so we need to return boolean to indicate if it was successful. We first check the balance of context.sender, which is the user that executed given transaction. If there is not enough money on the balance, we return false. Otherwise, subtract value from the balance of sender and increment balance of to.

You can see the full implementation of the Context class in the near-sdk-as source here.

You’ll notice that we’ve also implemented transferFrom, approve and allowance in the sample.

Once you deploy the contract you can run the following commands in the browser console.

To initialize the balance

contract.init({initialOwner: walletAccount.getAccountId()}

To check your balance

contract.balanceOf({tokenOwner: walletAccount.getAccountId()})

To transfer funds, e.g. to Bob

contract.transfer({to: 'bob.near', tokens: '1000'})

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