Glossary
What is Crypto token?
A crypto token is a unit of value recorded by a smart contract on a blockchain; on EVM chains most tokens follow the ERC-20 standard.
A token is different from a chain's native coin. Monad's native coin is MON, used to pay gas; tokens are created by deploying a contract on top of the chain. The contract keeps the ledger of who holds how many units.
Tokens can represent anything the issuer chooses — a project's currency, a governance vote, a reward point, or a meme. What they have in common is that ownership and transfers are enforced on-chain by the token's contract, not by any company.
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Related terms
- ERC-20ERC-20 is the standard interface for fungible tokens on Ethereum and EVM chains like Monad, defining the functions (transfer, approve, balanceOf) every wallet and exchange expects a token to have.
- Total supplyTotal supply is the number of tokens that currently exist for a contract — every minted token minus every burned token.
- Smart contractA smart contract is code deployed on a blockchain that runs exactly as written when called, with no operator able to alter or stop it.