Only a week after the launch of ERC-404 — an unofficial Ethereum standard created to blend the functions of fungible and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) — another team of developers claims to have done it better with “DN404.”
The “Divisible NFT” standard, like its ERC-404 rival, “aims to be a hybrid ERC-20/721 token.” The proposed standard essentially allows NFT holders to trade fractionalized portions of their NFT with others, according to pseudonymous developer “cygaar” in a Feb. 12 X post.
“Our end goal was to create a token standard that could act as an NFT with native fractionalization built in,” cygaar added. They claimed while ERC-404 has been popular, “it doesn’t follow existing standards, is inefficient, and breaks at certain edge cases.”
Most trading will be done on the base contract – this is a fully compliant ERC20 token that tracks user balances and handles the minting/burning of the mirrored NFTs.
You can think of these tokens as fractions of the NFTs. They’re compatible with DEXes out of the box.
— cygaar (@0xCygaar) February 12, 2024
While ERC-404 can interact with ERC-20 token and ERC-721 NFT contracts, it still requires protocols to implement ERC-404 to ensure its tokens function as designed.
Cygaar, however, explained that DN404’s approach uses two contacts: “A ‘base’ ERC-20 with a ‘mirror’ ERC-721” and claims they’re “fully compliant” with protocols “out of the box.”
This is because the bulk of trading happens on the ERC-20 token contract — described as “fractions of the NFTs,” explained Cygaar. When base ERC-20 tokens are transferred, the mirrored NFTs are burned and minted automatically.
A wallet with a token amount equal to at least one base unit will receive an NFT on the mirrored contract and NFTs are conversely burned when the wallet holds below the minimum base unit amount.
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Cygaar said the ultimate goal was to allow users to trade portions of NFTs without any…
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