Create an ERC20 Token

Create an ERC-20 Token Using Solidity

In this tutorial we will be creating our own mintable ERC-20 token and will mint it to any address we want. The token will be generated on Dijets Utility Chain.

The article focuses on deploying a smart contract written with Solidity to Dijets. This is the feature that Dijets provides us - to be able to deploy any smart contract to the chain and no requirement for a new language specific contract concept to interact. Let’s look at how to create an ERC-20 contract and deploy it on Dijets Utility Chain.

Set up MetaMask#

The first thing we should set is a MetaMask wallet address.

Click on MetaMask icon on the browser and select the network drop-down menu. Here we can connect to Dijets Utility Chain. Click "Custom RPC".

Fill in the fields with the information provided below.

• Network Name: Dijets Utility Chain
• New RPC URL: https://dijets.ukwest.cloudapp.azure.com:443/ext/bc/C/rpc
• ChainID: 98200
• Symbol: DJT
• Explorer: https://utility-explorer.swedencentral.cloudapp.azure.com/

After setting up all the parameters correctly we should have our Metamask connected to Dijets Utility Chain and a wallet address we can use to deploy our contract.

Fund Your Utility Chain Address#

For funding on Dijets Testnet, you can use the Test Network Faucet. Navigate to Dijets Faucet and paste your Utility Chain address.

Create Mintable Token#

Now, we can create our mintable token on Tinker. Open Tinker on your browser or go to this link.

On this page, first, click "SOLIDITY" from "Featured Plugins" and then click the "New File" button. When you click the New File button, you will see a pop-up that requires a file name. You can choose a name or leave the default.

Since we will use an ERC-20 contract from OpenZeppelin, just paste this line to the file and save.

After saving the file, we will see a bunch of files being imported into Tinker. These files are imported from a GitHub contract repository to Tinker via a URL-link with an import statement.

We have ERC20PresetMinterPauser.sol file in the presets. This file is from OpenZeppelin's repo and follows the ERC20 standards with minting functionality.

The minter functionality declares the deployer (unless specified) of the contract as its owner thus giving him/her the authority to mint tokens.

Since in this example we are deploying the contract ourselves using our private key and address, we will be the owner of the contract and thus have the ability to mint the tokens.

Deploy the Contract#

Open the tab with the label Compiler and select the solidity version that matches with the solidity version written in file as pragma solidity …... The version should be equal to or higher than the file’s version. For example, in our file the version stated on the top of the contract is pragma solidity ^0.6.0 so the required version we need to pick should be 0.6.0 or higher.

After checking the solidity version click the compile button. If you did not change anything in the file, or the solidity version is not wrong, the contract should compile without any errors.

Now click the tab with label Deploy & run transactions. Here before deploying our contract, we should change the environment. Click the environment tab and select "Injected Web3." If a Decypher or Metamask pop-up shows up and asks you to connect the account, then please go ahead and click connect. Once connected you should see your address listed under environment.

The last step before deployment is to select the correct contract from a dropdown section placed just above the Deploy button. Select the contract named ERC20PresetMinterPauser.sol. You will see a section asking you to fill out the main details of your token, often called the constructor arguments.

For this example we will name the token "test" with the symbol tst. Click the Transact button.

A pop-up from Decypher or Metamask (depending upon what you are using) will ask you for signing and confirming the transaction. Once you confirm the pop-ups, the transaction will be execcuted and the smart contract will be deployed to Dijets Utility Chain.

Now that the contract has been deployed, we can start interacting with it.

Interact with Token#

In order to interact with the token contract we first need to find its address called the Contract Address. You can find the contract address by going to Tinker's console and clicking the arrow to expand the text. You should now be able to see the transaction hash of the contract we deployed earlier. Copy the transaction hash.

Paste the copied transaction hash into the Explorer's Search Bar and press enter.

This page is the transaction summary page detailing all the information about the transaction that deployed our Token contract.

The first address on the page is the wallet address that created the token and deployed the contract and the second address is the contract address for the token test.

After deployment a new section named Deployed Contracts should now be available on Tinker.

This section contains all of the functions that we call and use to interact with our token contract. Let's use the mint function to get some tokens minted to our address.

Click the arrow beside the mint method and enter your address and the amount of tokens you wish to mint in wei. For example, if you wish to mint 1000 tst tokens, then the amount in wei for 1000 should be entered as 1000000000000000000000

Add Token to MetaMask#

Even though we have minted 1000 tst tokens to our address. The token will only be visible in Metamask once we specify its contract address and import it.

To import our 1000 tokens we just minted, click Import Tokens tab under Assets in Metamask. Under Custom Token -> Token Contract address paste the contract address of the token we copied earlier.

The rest of the details like the token name test and its symbol tst will automatically get populated. Click Next and you should now be able to see your 1000 test tokens within the Metamask wallet.