How To Issue ERC20 Tokens And Launch An ICO

Ethereum is a very powerful platform for building dApps (decentralized apps). For those that are confused about issuing tokens, they have a detailed solidity contract that can do exactly this on their website (here). Let us walk through the available sample code first.

MVC (Minimum Viable Contract)

pragma solidity ^0.4.20;

contract MyToken {
    /* This creates an array with all balances */
    mapping (address => uint256) public balanceOf;

    /* Initializes contract with initial supply tokens to the creator of the contract */
    function MyToken(
        uint256 initialSupply
        ) public {
        balanceOf[msg.sender] = initialSupply;              // Give the creator all initial tokens
    }

    /* Send coins */
    function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) public {
        require(balanceOf[msg.sender] >= _value);           // Check if the sender has enough
        require(balanceOf[_to] + _value >= balanceOf[_to]); // Check for overflows
        balanceOf[msg.sender] -= _value;                    // Subtract from the sender
        balanceOf[_to] += _value;                           // Add the same to the recipient
    }
}

This contract enables transferring tokens between users on the same blockchain. It defines a transfer function and also gives the creator all of the initial tokens.

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