Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Is Forming a 'Token Task Force'

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is boarding the tokenization train.

The 385-member standards body plans to form a "Token task force" this year, executive director Ron Resnick told CoinDesk.

The group will work on a specification for tokens that run on top of ethereum and private blockchains based on it, with business uses in mind.

Notably, the task force will do this not only for assets whose units are interchangeable with one another, but also for individual tokens with unique properties.

"We are creating a token task force; we will do that first half of this year," Resnick said.

"It's going to be focused on support for fungible ERC-20 and non-fungible, ERC-721 tokens."

"We want to create a token specification standard for enterprise tokenization so basically [assets] can be managed in a much better way with more assurance than what's happening today," Resnick said.

The planned task force marks its first direct technical approach addressing the token phenomenon which swept crypto-land in recent years - first in the uninhibited initial coin offering boom of 2017, and more recently with a wave of regulated security token offerings and platforms.

"Since the explosion of ICOs there has been an incredible technology development in the open source community around token standards. Whether it's ERC-20, ERC-223, ERC-721 and beyond - there are quite a lot of them," said John Whelan, the blockchain lab director at global banking giant Santander, and head of the EEA board.

"We can imagine a time where similar kinds of standards are needed in the world of tokens. And that would be a guiding driver behind these kinds of initiatives."