Evmos Introduces Native Tokens as ERC-20 for Cosmos
Quick Take
- Evmos developed the ERC-20 and Bank EVM Extensions to improve the UX and compatibility between native Cosmos and ERC-20 tokens.
- The features, set to be deployed on testnet in next month, aim to ease integration between wallets and native assets on Evmos, including Cosmos tokens.
- Evmos becomes the first Cosmos chain that supports a single token representation for both native assets and ERC-20.
Berlin, November 17, 2023 — Altiplanic, the Evmos Core Development Team, announces a groundbreaking development in the ecosystem with the introduction of native assets in an ERC-20 compliant format via the recently launched EVM Extensions.
This move is designed to bridge the user experience gap between Native and ERC-20 token standards, enhancing security, and improving compatibility within the Evmos (EVMOS and all Cosmos IBC denominations) ecosystem.
“We’re really excited to present this breakthrough innovation to our ecosystem that will push the boundaries of UX when dealing with Native Assets. This functionality will allow users, wallets and developers to seamlessly onboard to all Cosmos Native assets without the need of changing their preferred tools on the EVM or executing a transaction to (un)wrap them”
— Federico Kunze Küllmer, Evmos Founder
Native Token and ERC-20 Incompatibility
The ERC-20 standard, established in November 2015 by Fabian Vogelsteller and Vitalik Buterin, has become the standard for fungible tokens in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Since then, multiple extensions to this standard have been created to improve the user and developer experience such as the ERC-20 Metadata, which incorporates a custom name, symbol and decimals for the ERC-20 tokens.
Native assets, such as ETH, however are not compatible with the ERC-20 format, affecting developer and user experience. Wrapped Ether (WETH) addresses this, but it serves as a temporary fix as ETH isn’t ERC-20 compatible, requiring manual transactions for wrapping and unwrapping, leading to suboptimal user experiences.
Evmos currently supports multiple standards to ensure compatibility with Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. However, the lack of native tokens (EVMOS and Cosmos ecosystem) support for the ERC-20 standard have remained a persistent challenge in EVM-based chains, impacting clients and developers.
The Issue about Displaying all User’s Tokens
More technical challenges stem from disparities between ERC-20 and Cosmos formats, necessitating a centralized approach for balance accounting, which directly impacts user experience. ERC-20 serves as the de-facto standard for tokens on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), while Cosmos supports a different format for Native Assets (aka. Coins) containing only denomination and amount information, but not the token metadata as ERC-20s do.
Unlike ERC-20, where all data must be obtained from the smart contract state, Cosmos allows information retrieval from a centralized state that tracks all native asset denominations (the bank module). This centralized approach for accounting balances is particularly advantageous for UX use cases, such as displaying all user’s tokens with their corresponding balances.
However, implementing this functionality on the EVM poses challenges. EVM wallets must know the addresses of all ERC-20 token contracts and, for each ERC-20 token, send a single balance query to retrieve the user’s owned amount. EVM wallets can only achieve this by using an indexer service that stores information in a centralized database, requiring wallets to trust the information displayed by the indexer provider.
Onboarding All Native Assets
The introduction of Evmos ERC-20 and Bank EVM Extensions addresses the problems stated above and simplifies the way users interact with tokens.
The ERC-20 extension allows you to interact with the chain’s native token as if it was an ERC-20 token. This removes the need for separate wrapped token contracts. Additionally the Bank EVM Extension provides a single source of truth for token balances and a central point for interaction with all tokens. Users and dApps can now query all their balances without the need of an indexer.
Native tokens on Evmos will no longer have to be split between its ERC-20 and the native versions — all tokens will share the same ERC-20 interface for developers to interact with them.
This implies:
- Direct interaction with all Native Cosmos tokens using IBC wallets.
- Streamlined usage of tokens from EVM without the need for Native Asset registration via governance.
- EVM Clients can now seamlessly integrate with all Cosmos Native Assets.
With the new EVM Extensions Evmos becomes the first Cosmos chain that supports a single token representation for both native assets and ERC20.
EVMOS = WEVMOS
The single token representation aligns with Evmos’ goal to perfect user experience and foster an accessible environment for everyone.
If you have EVMOS tokens, you can now use them directly in dApps on Evmos’ EVM without having to wrap or unwrap them in different ways. You don’t need a wrapped version of the EVMOS token as the EVMOS and WEVMOS are now fully equivalent to each other. This streamlines the usage of EVMOS token smoothly across different applications.
A Massive Leap to Cosmos Ecosystem Token Adoption
The introduction of new extensions provides benefits to all parties:
- Ethereum Developers: Seamless interaction with Cosmos tokens by default.
- Cosmos Ecosystem tokens: Automatic representation of all Cosmos native assets as ERC20.
- Institutional Support: Ease of integration with Cosmos assets for efficient asset and portfolio management.
About Evmos
Evmos is an interoperable EVM blockchain designed for cross-chain dApp development.
The Evmos Core Development Team is on a mission to create and ship the foundational tools necessary for building the cross-chain applications of the future. With groundbreaking roadmap features like EVM Extensions, the Evmos SDK, and the Evmos dApp Store, Evmos gives developers the freedom to take advantage of the IBC and connect their smart contracts to the Cosmos Ecosystem.
This revolutionary technology frees developers from the confines of today’s siloed blockchains.
The future is cross-chain.
Helpful Resources
🎮 Evmos App: https://app.evmos.org/
🖥 Evmos Website: https://evmos.org
💻 Developer Documentation: https://docs.evmos.org
👾 Official Discord: https://discord.gg/evmos
🐙 GitHub: https://github.com/evmos/evmos
🕊 Twitter: https://twitter.com/EvmosOrg
📯 Telegram: @EvmosOrg
📄 Blog: https://blog.evmos.org
🌋 Evmos Careers: https://boards.eu.greenhouse.io/evmos
Evmos is the EVM stack for building natively cross-chain decentralized applications.
We encourage you to read the Evmos Manifesto and learn more about our plans to build a cross-chain future.
DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This content is strictly for educational purposes. It’s not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets.
