What is an ERC20 Token?

ERC20 is a technical standard used for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain for implementing tokens. These ERC20 tokens could be held in Ethereum wallets. Sometimes, distributed by a firm or project for free – calls it an airdrop. In general, these tokens are given in exchange for Ethereum using a smart contract. This is called a token sale. This phenomenon of raising funds in Ether and distributing tokens is called an ICO – Initial Coin Offering.

Sale & Value of ERC20 Tokens

Tokens received into your Ethereum wallet either as an airdrop or via a token sale needs to have a value. They don’t hold any value until they are traded publicly on an exchange or OTC market. (OTC trading happens when the underlying organization or project which has distributed is very worthy).

The question!

If they are being traded on a cryptocurrency exchange, the next question would be “how do I move these tokens from my wallet to the cryptocurrency exchange?”

How to transfer ERC20 tokens with an example?

Let us take 0Xproject token (ZRX) as an example. This can be any other ICO as far as the tokens issued are ERC20 standards like ZRX or KICK or any other token.

You would have got your ZRX tokens to your Ethereum wallet which can be accessed via Metamask or MyEtherWallet aka MEW. To answer the above question, let us consider a prominent exchange that has the ZRX listed – Binance and see how we can transfer these ERC20 tokens to the cryptocurrency exchange and trade them later.

Getting deposit address from the exchange

Login to Binance

Go to Balances -> Deposits & Withdrawals

Interestingly, finding ZRX is easy here too when you sort it by name as the project or coin name starts with 0 or you can filter by typing in ZRX. Once you see ZRX as shown below, you need to get the Deposit Address.

Click on the Deposit button in the Action column of the table against ZRX token (row). You should be able to see an Ethereum like address, which you need to copy to clipboard.

Sending tokens from Wallet to Exchange

Now go to https://www.myetherwallet.com and unlock your account using private key stored. This opens up the wallet through which you’ve purchased ZRX tokens. Once it is unlocked, go to the bottom right corner of the screen, where you will see buttons “Load Token Balances”, “Show Tokens”.

Click on Load Token Balancesand once it is done, click on Show Tokens which will list all possible ERC20 tokens compatible with MyEtherWallet. Fortunately, ZRX starts with Z and will be easily available at the end when you scroll all the way down.

You can now see the Balance of your ZRX here.

Once you have your address, come back to MEW(MyEtherWallet). Since you have got the Token Balances, now you will have a dropdown beside Amount to Send which shows all possible Tokens you have balance for. Eg: ETH and ZRX as shown below. Select ZRX and continue to next step

You can either enter the amount of ZRX tokens to be sent to exchange or use Send Entire Balance quick link to populate with your ZRX balance.

Then, paste(Ctrl+V or Command+V) the deposit address which you’ve copied from Binance. Be very careful and double, triple check the address matches with your Binance address — If you copy a wrong one or miss something, your tokens will be lost forever.

Executing the transaction

Once address is pasted, amount to send is populated and ZRX is selected from the dropdown. The gas value will automatically change to around 52000 and then click on Generate Transaction and then click on Send Transaction and that’s it — it gives you the “Verify Transaction” button at the bottom or you can search etherscan.io using your Binance address.

Originally posted on our medium blog