The Protocol: Bitcoin's OP_CAT, Fake Ethereum Tokens, Starknet's Airdrop

FILES NOT FOUND: Ethereum has a standardized process for adding new token standards, including the well-known ERC-20, for fungible tokens, and ERC-721, for non-fungible tokens or NFTs. But a new unofficial token standard, ERC-404 is suddenly getting traction – and there’s now a supposedly improved version called DN-404. Both standards aim to combine virtues of fungible and non-fungible tokens, theoretically offering the potential to fractionalize NFTs – sort of like creating separate tokens representing a partial interest. The first ERC-404 token, PANDORA, traded as high as $32,000 on Friday morning from a low of $250, in just under a week, as reported by CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa. “Several projects have already latched on to the hype and issued their own versions of ERC-404 tokens,” including on the Arbitrum and Solana blockchain ecosystems, Malwa wrote. According to the analysis firm FundStrat, “this standard also seamlessly aligns with the ongoing trend of meme token trading.” Nansen, the blockchain data firm, noted in an email that ERC-404 tokens “recorded a staggering $190 million in trading volume just a week after it was launched.” The flurry was enough to drive a spike in Ethereum fees. Wu Blockchain newsletter wrote that “the current hype and FOMO are already very strong.” CoinDesk’s Daniel Kuhn wrote that there are nagging worries some blockchain users might mistakenly think that ERC-404s have been approved and vetted under the official process – raising “concerns over the safety of the technical design of ERC-404s, considering that they are unaudited.” On Monday, a group of Ethereum application developers started a new unofficial token contract purporting to solve some of the apparent drawbacks – called DN-404, short for “Divisible NFT-404.” One of the developers, who goes by the X handle @0xQuit, tweeted that the newer version “averages about 20% gas savings vs ERC-404.”