How To Create Your Own Cryptocurrency

No, you don’t need to be a techie for this

Image Courtesy : Nikita Andreev

This post will explain the steps to build a custom cryptocurrency on ethereum platform. It will be a minimalist approach. By the end of this post, you will be able to create a custom token and deploy it on a testnet (ropsten network) and play around with it. There is no programming experience needed, just follow the steps/images circled with red ovals and copy/paste the coding part .

The following tools will be used, don’t worry even if none of them make sense to you.

1. Ethereum — the blockchain platform
2. Remix — online Editor for writing smart contracts in solidity
3. MetaMask — ethereum client, which will interact with the test network (ropsten)
4. wallet.etherum.org — online wallet to check and send tokens

STEP 1: Install Metamask and load free ether in rospten test network

Open chrome and install metamask by clicking the link. Metamask is an ethereum client for browser

MetaMask

Click on the fox icon that will appear on the right hand side top corner of the browser and follow the steps in the infographic to load free ether. Ether is the cyrptocurrency for ethereum platform.

Metamask setup and loading ether

The ethereum address is similar to a bank account number
ex: “0x3fEE7A8227f8F415e61b556692A210333Bd64258”. Keep the address handy it will be used later.

This is the main account address. At this point the address will have 1 ether. If you don’t get an ether, post your address in the comments section. I will transfer 1 ether to you. Ether is needed for deploying the code into test network.

STEP 2: Create a custom currency and deploy it to Ropsten network

The smart contract for creating custom token is written in solidity.
Open Remix online editor, remove the existing Ballot code, copy and paste the below source code.(If you are not able to copy, click the “view raw” at bottom right corner of the code snippet)

Customize the token by changing the below values (optional)
a) token name (line: 4)

string public name = “Your custom Name”;

b) symbol (line : 6)

string public symbol = "Ticker symbol, 3-4 chars";

c) totalSupply (line: 9)

uint256 public totalSupply = 100000; 

After making the changes, follow these steps to compile and deploy the changes to ropsten network

a) In Remix editor, click on the ‘Run’ tab and select ‘Environment’

b) Select the environment as ‘Injected Web3’

c) Click on ‘create’ button to compile

d) This will open metamask UI, click ‘submit’ to deploy it to ropsten network.

e) It will take some time to deploy the smart contract into ropsten network. Wait until the smart contract gets deployed. Vola! The smart contract is deployed to ropsten network.

f) After the smart contract is deployed, in Remix editor to the righthand side an ABI (Don’t worry about it) will be created. It could be seen annotated with red oval in the below image.

g) Copy the contract address by clicking on the copy to clip board icon

h) Paste the address into a text pad and save it. This will be needed to check and send TRexCoin tokens.
ex : “0x1c59e4239ceccf46ef9095ec9e54897229b7d7b7”

STEP 3 : Load the contract into ethereum wallet

a) Open https://wallet.ethereum.org in a new tab and click on the ‘contracts’ tab

b) Scroll down and click on the watch tokens

c) Add the token information

1. Copy the contract address derived from step 2.h into the first row ex:”0x1c59e4239ceccf46ef9095ec9e54897229b7d7b”
2. Set the Token name in second row eg: ‘TRexCoin’
3. Set the Token symbol in third row eg: ‘TRC’
4. Set the number of decimal places to zero eg: ‘0’
5. Click ‘ok’

d) If everything goes fine after this step, the number of TRC tokens will be displayed in the watch tokens tab. Yay! The tokens are on the network

Awesome now we can see the 1,00,000 TRC coins.

STEP 4: Lets send some TRexCoins to a friend

a) Click on Send button on top of ethereum wallet

b) Set the address to which TrexCoins should be sent (How Do I create another address? see step 5), select TRexcoin and enter the number of TrexCoins

Eg: I will be sending 2000 TrexCoins to “0xf3842AF2731107778A48c6E63915a5c484131Cd4”

c) Click on ‘Send’ and ‘Submit’ on Metamask request

d) Now check the status of the TRexCoins for the destination account

Step 5 (optional): Create destination address for step 4

a) Click on metamask Icon on the right side of the address bar to open up metamask UI and click the switch account button

b) Select create account to create a new account

d) The above step will create the account, click the three dots icon and copy the address to clipboard

Follow the above steps and play around with the wallet, create custom tokens, send me your contract address, and your custom tokens to my address at “0x3fEE7A8227f8F415e61b556692A210333Bd64258”

If you feel like donating some real ether I will not mind, please do at “0xC5dF4B49af1Ec33FD50Ad07a2229eCE52D8eFFf3”

If you encounter any errors, post the errors in the comment section.