Difference between the fungible and non-fungible tokens

MathiBharathi Mariselvan
6 min readApr 1, 2021

All you need to know about the things that segregate the purpose of the fungible and non-fungible tokens

Difference between fungible and non-fungible tokens

Fungible and non-fungible tokens are not so different. They are different in their aspiration of creation and their variability. That said, in this blog, let us know about the difference between the fungible and non-fungible tokens more explicitly with special reference to the NFT creation as a matter of ultimate guide. Let us start from the basics.

What is a crypto token?

In real life, a crypto token is a thing that serves as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality, feeling, etc. you can empty your pockets right now and the chances are that you will stumble across a lot of real-life tokens.

  • Your office ID card shows that a company gainfully employs you.
  • Your driving license is a token, representing the fact that you have taken the training required to drive in your country.
  • Your hotel key card shows that you have paid the hotel for your room.

Similarly, in the crypto-verse, a token is a representation of “something” in its particular ecosystem. It could value, stake, voting right, or anything. A token is not limited to one specific role; it can fulfill many roles in its native ecosystem. A token represents an asset or utility that a company has, and they usually give it away to their investors during a public sale.

The Roles of a crypto token

A crypto token is a representation of something in its particular ecosystem. It could be value, stake, voting right, or anything. A crypto token is not limited to a specific role; it can fulfill a lot of functions in its native ecosystem, such as:

  • Toll: A crypto token can act as a gateway to the Dapp. Basically, to access the Dapp, you will need to hold the crypto tokens.
  • Voting Rights: The crypto tokens may also qualify the holders to have certain voting rights. Think of EOS, holding EOS tokens will allow you to vote for block producers.
  • Value Exchange: This is one of the more traditional roles of crypto tokens within the ecosystem. Tokens can help create an internal economic system within the application.
  • User Experience Enhancement: The token can also enable the holders to enrich the user experience inside the particular environment's confines. Eg. In Brave (a web browser), holders of BAT (tokens used in Brave) will get the right to enrich the customer experience by using their tokens to add advertisements or other attention-based services on the Brave platform.
  • Currency: It can be used as a store of value to conduct transactions both inside and outside the given ecosystem.
  • Ownership of something unique: A non-fungible token can represent something unique for that particular user. Eg. Cryptokitties.

Fungible vs Non-Fungible Tokens

Alright, we have gained some background info on how tokens work, let’s look at the difference between fungible and non-fungible tokens. According to Investopedia:

“Fungibility is a good or asset’s interchangeability with other individual goods or assets of the same type.” Whereas non-fungibility is a collectible that cannot be interchanged nor segregated. They have a unique value and the price of one token differs from that of others. Whereas fungibility does not work like that.

Let’s understand this with an example.

Suppose you borrow a $100 note from a friend. To pay her back, do you really need to pay her back with the same note?

Absolutely not.

You can pay her back with another $100 note. In fact, you can give your friend 2 50-dollar notes or even 10 10-dollar notes. It will be perfectly fine because dollars (or paper currencies in general) are, for the most part, fungible.

Now, let’s suppose you borrow your friend’s car. Will she be ok with you returning some other car to her? What if you break up her car and return her the engine, wheels, doors, etc.? You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t file a complaint against you!

So, what happened here?

A car counts as a collectible, which is why it is non-fungible.

This is the fundamental difference between a fungible asset and a non-fungible asset.

Currencies gain more value by their fungibility. The more widely regarded and accepted a specific currency is, the more people will use it, and hence more it's perceived value will be. So, if payment is one of the main utilities of the token that you are interested in, then you should check whether the token is fungible or not.

Non-fungibility is a desired asset when your token is collectible and gains its values from its uniqueness.

Fungible tokens rely on ERC20 tokens whereas non-fungible tokens rely on ERC721/ERC1155 to create and develop the token.

Based on the facts, let us know more about the Non-fungible tokens in much detail through ERC 721 token.

ERC721- The Non-fungible token standard:

The ERC-721 symbolic standard makes non-fungible tokens. From multiple points of view, it is really like ERC-20 in usefulness. This comparability exists for two reasons:

Right off the bat, it is simpler for designers to make the progress. , they will not need to gain proficiency with a large group of new things

It makes life a lot simpler for clients who can store these tokens in customary wallets and exchange them on trades.

The interface for ERC-721 gives two strategies:

  1. Proprietor of: to inquiry a symbolic’s proprietor.
  2. Move from: to move responsibility for a token.

ERC-721 Functions

The ERC-721 standard characterizes the accompanying capacities: name, image, complete inventory, equilibrium of, proprietor of, support, takeOwnership, move, tokenOfOwnerByIndex, and token Metadata. It additionally portrays two occasions: Transfer and Approval.

Before we go into singular capacity conversations, you should understand what we mean by the Token Ownership and Token Creation of the ERC-721 capacities.

Token Ownership

At the point when you purchase ERC-20 tokens, your privileges of proprietorship will be written in the brilliant agreements. The keen agreement additionally has information on the number of tokens each address will have after the arrangement… and that is it. Indeed these agreements don’t have to stress over explicit tokens since they are fungible, so they are no different either way.

Nonetheless, the estimation of one ERC-721 token isn’t equivalent to another ERC-721 token on account of its non-fungibility. Adding a location and equilibrium to the agreement will not be sufficient; a symbolic’s novel proprietorship subtleties likewise should be added.

Upsides and downsides of Non-fungible tokens

Pros

ERC-721 standard can be a path with which each critical resource could be tokenized on a public or private blockchain with a completely unchanging nature and security.

Non-fungible tokens can be planned with far a larger number of assets than accessible to most during that time. Clients can do this, adding additional specific situations and data to the resource’s metadata.

Cons:

The ERC-721 symbolic standard is still generally new.

Fungible tokens are detachable up to a specific degree. ERC-721 essentially can’t be separated and should be purchased or sold entirety.

As referenced previously, a few tasks have begun giving NFT tokens.

How to create NFT for your business?

You should follow certain procedures and legal procedures before jumping to start the NFT for your business.

  1. You should, first of all, create a corporate entity and get a legal license.
  2. You have to carve out legal procedures and claims before starting your NFT business.
  3. Make sure that the terms and conditions, privacy policy, and other conditions get satisfied.
  4. Then you have to install the metamask browser, pixura software and create an NFT marketplace.
  5. Then you have to list your token by creating an impeccable and distinguished token and list it in the marketplace.
  6. You can also allow your users, traders, and investors to buy, sell, or exchange NFT on your platform.
  7. You can find more details about NFT and through the ultimate guide to NFT development where NFT is explained briefly.

Finally, where to get help to create NFT marketplace?

You can individually create an NFT marketplace if you have a piece of minimal technical knowledge and more guts. But, it will take a lot of time to create one. So, it is wise to get assistance from a trusted NFT service provider to make your dream come true.

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MathiBharathi Mariselvan

Blockchain Entrepreneur and investor. Cryptoprenuer to be precise. Guiding Crypto enthusiasts and CEOs. You know what, Blockchain is a revolution.