11.1.1 Fungible vs. Non-Fungible Tokens

Our ERC-1155 contract supports both fungible, and non-fungible tokens. Fungibility is an economic concept that describes whether an asset is interchangeable with assets of the same type.

For example, if person A has one dollar, and person B has one dollar, if they were to exchange dollars there wouldn’t result in any difference in value because both person A and person B still have one dollar and they have the same value. The dollar is an example of a fungible asset, because they are interchangeable.

On the other hand, two non-fungible assets of the same type are not interchangeable without having a potential difference in value. If person A has a baseball card, and person B has a baseball card, it is totally possible that exchanging baseball cards will mean that there is an exchange in value. Baseball cards are non-fungible because even though they are all of the same type (baseball cards), each one is distinctly different from the others.

From a technical perspective, both fungible and non-fungible tokens have a “base ID” that identifies the type of token. What makes a non-fungible token different is that it also has a “token ID” that functions as a kind of serial number that makes it unique from the other tokens that share the same “base ID”.

Examples:

Ethereum ERC-1155 Fungible

  • Base ID: 0x0100000000000000000000000000000000

Ethereum ERC-1155 Non-Fungible

  • Base ID: 0x8000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000000
    • The first token minted the base ID above would be 0x8000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000001
    • The second: 0x8000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000002
    • So on and so forth.

Trade offs

  • Fungible tokens aren’t as expensive to mint and transfer. I can send 10 tokens with base ID 0x0100000000000000000000000000000000 and it will lower the sender’s balance of that token by 10, and increase the recipient’s balance of that token by 10, making it very efficient.
  • Non-Fungible tokens are more expensive because you have to transfer each individual token ID one at a time which is more computationally expensive which costs more in the long run.

The Creators Tool currently only enables self-service for NFTs. Please contact our team if you wish to create a Fungible Token. Fungible Tokens are typically used to create currencies on the platform, enabling users to transact and acquire NFTs or come in the form of ingame currencies.