Coding my first Ethereum token

One year passed since the very first post here. And half from the last one xd. Time to get cracking! Last year was huge in the crypto space. I sank into it too. The more I'm learning (losing money), the more I'm into it. So here we are learning solidity and having fun!

The starting point is always the same: some tutorial. Let's give some kudos to Dapp University for making a lot of them! I'm following a real-world ico tutorial but this part is only about creating Token with a few extra changes.

let's start!

oh.. one more. My code is here!

ICO?

A little bit of theory. ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is a way of raising capital by companies. You give them money, they give you tokens. And that is basically it. So the goal is to create some token for you and let you pay me for it with BTC for example. Whoooa! 💸

Some basics

Since this is my first solidity project, I think it is worth to wrote down some basic commands and terms to be remembered.

Frameworks to make life easier. Truffle

npm install -g truffle

Then you can check your truffle version with: truffle version command. It will print some more information which is quite useful.

Truffle v5.5.7 (core: 5.5.7)
Ganache v^7.0.3
Solidity v0.5.16 (solc-js)
Node v17.8.0
Web3.js v1.5.3

To initialize project structure run: truffle init

You need some Ethereum based blockchain on your machine and CLI for it. It would be nice to test everything locally.

npm install -g ganache-cli

To run blockchain with ganache: ganache-cli. Bum! blockchain is running!

Extra note:

I had some problems while migrating my contracts to Ganache. I couldn't connect with it. Running ganache-cli with specified port and host was helpful. Consider using ganache-cli -h localhost -p 8545.

The Token

Thanks to openzeppelin-solidity, creating token based on ERC20 is just inheriting from ERC20 class. Mine will be called BonkToken. Don't ask me why 😜

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity 0.8.13;

import "openzeppelin-solidity/contracts/token/ERC20/ERC20.sol";

contract BonkToken is ERC20{
    constructor(string memory _name, string memory _symbol)
    ERC20(_name, _symbol)
    {

    }

}

And that is basically it. You can inherit from other classes to add functionalities and other properties to your token. Now run truffle compile to check if everything is ok!

Migration

Migration is about specifying how your contract should be deployed into the network. Network params are specified in truffle-config.js file.

const BonkToken = artifacts.require("./BonkToken.sol");

module.exports = function (deployer) {
    const _name = "Bonk Token";
    const _symbol = "BNK";
    deployer.deploy(BonkToken, _name, _symbol);
};

After defining migration, run truffle migrate.

Tests

Since I'm new to solidity and JS, I was writing my tests based on openzeppelin mostly and some tutorial tips.

So the basic test for name and symbol of our token should look like:

const BonkToken = artifacts.require('BonkToken');
const { expect } = require('chai')

contract('BonkToken', accounts => {

    const _name = 'Bonk Token';
    const _symbol = 'BNK';

    describe('token attributes', function () {

        beforeEach(async function () {
            this.token = await BonkToken.new(_name, _symbol, _decimals);
        })

        it('has the correct name', async function () {
            expect(await this.token.name()).to.equal(_name)
        })

        it('has the correct symbol', async function () {
            expect(await this.token.symbol()).to.equal(_symbol)
        })
    })

})

To run those tests, make sure you have Ganache running (ganache-cli ) and run truffle test. Results should look like:

  Contract: BonkToken
    token attributes
✓ Transaction submitted successfully. Hash: 0xb04baef19503e3c4ff529e857b28045d50eb1461048a85d3f08686059f4a8318
      ✓ has the correct name
✓ Transaction submitted successfully. Hash: 0xd75e5bf01f7e3876f246a454c5fff3263f584a285f06f07b4c57896127313897
      ✓ has the correct symbol

  2 passing (269ms)

Extending Token

So just for practice, I wanted to extend my token with the decimals field as it is in the tutorial. The difference is that I'm inheriting from ERC20 which has the only symbol and name parameters in the constructor. ERC20 by default returns 18 for decimals.

So first things first, I've added tests which ofc failed. The extended test file should look like this:

const BonkToken = artifacts.require('BonkToken');
const { BN } = require('@openzeppelin/test-helpers')
const { expect } = require('chai')

contract('BonkToken', accounts => {

    const _name = 'Bonk Token';
    const _symbol = 'BNK';
    const _decimals = new BN(18);

    describe('token attributes', function () {

        beforeEach(async function () {
            this.token = await BonkToken.new(_name, _symbol, _decimals);
        })

        it('has the correct name', async function () {
            expect(await this.token.name()).to.equal(_name)
        })

        it('has the correct symbol', async function () {
            expect(await this.token.symbol()).to.equal(_symbol)
        })

        it('has the correct decimals', async function () {
            expect(await this.token.decimals()).to.be.bignumber.equal(_decimals)
        })
    })

})

The next thing is to make some changes in BonkToken itself. Updated file:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity 0.8.13;

import "openzeppelin-solidity/contracts/token/ERC20/ERC20.sol";

contract BonkToken is ERC20{

    uint8 private _decimals;

    constructor(string memory _name, string memory _symbol, uint8 decimals_)
    ERC20(_name, _symbol)
    {
        _decimals = decimals_;
    }

    function decimals() public override view returns(uint8){
        return _decimals;
    }
}

I've added a new parameter for BonkToken in the constructor which will set contract property. Easy peasy
In ERC20, function decimals returns 18 by default. Since I wanted to have it parametrized (ofc. I will leave it 18 xd), I've simply overridden decimals function with returning _decimals parameter.

Deploy token to network

To get access to truffle console, run truffle console

Then in console:

truffle(development)> BonkToken.deployed( ).then((t) => {token = t})
undefined
truffle(development)> token.address
'0x14213DC7023Daf74e2D063d305978b5bdadB3beD'
truffle(development)> token.name( )
'Bonk Token'
truffle(development)> token.symbol( )
'BNK'
truffle(development)> token.decimals( )
BN { negative: 0, words: [ 18, <1 empty item> ], length: 1, red: null }