ERC-20 inventor discusses origins, new blockchains, BRC-20 and more

In 2018, Ethereum lead developer Fabian Vogelsteller contacted the community for a new standard for smart contracts he created alongside co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Dubbed ERC-20, Vogelsteller, at the time, only wished for input regarding the novel idea. Little did he know that ERC-20 would ignite a wave of initial coin offerings (ICOs) shortly after its inception to become the industry gold standard for issuing tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Just as ERC-20 tokens were gaining traction, Vogelsteller left the Ethereum Foundation the same year to focus on developing a new blockchain, Lukso. In an interview with Cointelegraph, the ERC-20 inventor discussed his motivation for creating his multiverse blockchain, as well as the latest token standard developments in the sector.

Let’s pump that creator economy they are currently rekt. pic.twitter.com/tIGiGjTpYn

— Fabian Vogelsteller (@feindura) July 20, 2023

Cointelegraph: Currently, ERC-20 is the gold token standard in the ecosystem. But in 2018, you left Ethereum to develop Lukso. What was the motivation behind that?

Fabian Vogelsteller: The human story behind it is that Marjorie [who is also Lukso’s co-founder], my wife at the time, had an idea of creating a blockchain for lifestyle and fashion. And I thought that’s a great idea. So, the story evolved to create a blockchain specifically focused on more mainstream use cases, such as for lifestyle, fashion designers, social media, content creators and YouTubers. Anything that’s more like what the internet users today would use rather than the token, finance or DeFi world.

CT: What inspired you to create the ERC-20 standard?

FV: I proposed the ERC-20 standard based on a concept from Vitalik. We discussed this, and it became the first smart contract standard. I called it an Ethereum Request for Comment because I just wanted to have comments. And I thought we’d issue a number randomly, like 20. This was never really thought out. So everything was just us going with the flow and figuring out how we use this stuff.

CT: How does the traction currently look for Lukso?

FV: Basically, we built out this smart contract account completely over the last five or six years. On May 23, we launched a mainnet that’s exactly like Ethereum. It’s the same tech and the same consensus algorithm. We started with 10,300 validator keys that are only community members. Now, the network has been running for one and a half months, and we have around 23,000 validators and…