ERC-404 token prices dip as rival implementation approaches

The initial hype surrounding the experimental ERC-404 token standard has calmed down as prices of tokens built with it have fallen in recent days.

The original token built using the standard, called Pandora, had a peak market cap of $324 million on February 9. It has since halved to $150 million, with the price of each token falling below $15,000.

Other tokens built to the same standard did not achieve as much success, with DeFrogs, the second largest, only reaching a market capitalization of $38 million. Since the peak, the price has fallen by 68%. Tokens Rug and Froggie Friends have largely fallen in price since launch.

The ERC-404 token standard is a new combination of ERC-20 tokens and NFTs. One way to look at it is to think of it as a native fractionalization of NFTs. The core idea is that when someone owns less than an entire NFT, the NFT disappears and the user only owns a fraction of a token. If they combine enough tokens to get a whole one, the NFT is returned to them – only it could be a different NFT.

It’s a weird and wacky mash-up, but one that has certainly found interest among the crypto community – largely because traders will jump on any trend early in case it becomes much bigger.

The ERC-404 token standard was built in a rush after developers prepared for a previous project that claimed to provide the same functionality but failed to deliver it. It has been criticized as inefficient when it comes to transaction costs. This was partly because burning and recreating NFTs is expensive on the Ethereum mainnet, but also because the implementation itself is said to have been written in an inefficient way.

A rival implementation

A group of developers is working on an alternative implementation of the same idea, which will be released soon. The upcoming standard will be called “Divisible NFT,” abbreviated to DN-404, according to a pseudonymous developer known as cygaar.

“We have rightly been working around the clock to get the DN404 (shareable NFT) code ready this weekend,” says cygaar posted on X.

After ERC-404 tokens gained popularity, there was a notable increase in transaction fees. Gaslite co-founder Pop Punk said this was what prompted the developers – who have experience optimizing code to keep costs down – to create the new version.

The seven-day moving average transaction fees on the Ethereum mainnet rose to $11 this weekend, after rising from $4 in late January, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. Parsec Finance noted on X that the new wave of ERC-404 tokens largely drove this increase in fees. By offering an alternative implementation with more efficient code, this could enable more ERC-404 tokens without clogging the network.

There has been some tension between the Pandora team and the group of developers working on the rival version. Although there were some initial discussions between the two groups, they did not end up on the same page not working together. This means that traders speculating on this new development will not only have to bet on whether it will be a success, but also which version they will support.