1. Backgroud
1.1 Digital assets
On October 31 of 2008, a paper written by a person or group named ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ released a white paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” The document issued to the subscribers of the cryptography mailing list described a revolutionary technology that created the world’s first genuine peer-to-peer and decentralized monetary system. The internet-based money enabled online payments without a third party and also wasn’t issued by a government or corporate entity. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.
In 2009, the Bitcoin digital asset trading platform was established. The Bitcoin system has been operating stably so far, and it has been grow into a peer-to-peer payment network worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
In 2015, the Ethereum smart contract appeared, which greatly facilitated the prosperity of digital assets and led the digital assets. A new round of grand occasions in the production market.
As of the end of 2017, there are nearly 1,000 digital assets counted on coinmarketcap, with a total market value of over 300 billion U.S. dollars.
1.2 What's ERC20?
'ERC' stands for "Ethereum Request for Comments”. This is an official protocol for proposing improvements to the Ethereum network. '20' is the unique proposal ID number.
'ERC20' is actually a standard that tokens on the Ethereum network can meet and tokens that check all the necessary boxes are deemed 'ERC20 Tokens'. These tokens are blockchain assets that have value and can be sent and received like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency. The difference between these tokens and a standalone currency like Bitcoin is that ERC20 tokens rely on the Ethereum network hosted by Ethereum addresses and sent by Ethereum transactions.
All ERC20 tokens transact on the same network that your Ethereum wallet uses. Hence an CPC address is also a GNT address is also an EOS address and so forth.