Hello,
I've been looking around and haven't found much informations related to this, I am currently on the embryonic stage of my blockchain project and would like to know how to secure a SYMBOL; ex; ETH, LTC, NEO, etc.
If someone would point me out in the right direction, I would be very grateful
Thank you
Simple answer: pick it yourself. However, keep in mind there have been collisions and confusion on different exchanges. So choose wisely.
If you are creating a ERC20 token, you specify the symbol in the smart contract. You can click on the token section at etherscan.io and see all of the smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and use their search box to see all the different deployed token symbols.
If you are creating a currency or a token on a different platform, the "symbol" is really up to you. I recommend you do not use one that is already in use. But it can be hard to know for sure that its never been used (plenty of dead coins out there).
One thing you may want to consider is that symbols that begin with "X" are "special" symbols pursuant to the ISO 4217 standard (which defines the currency codes for physical currency, such as USD for US Dollar). This is why you see some cryptos use codes such as XMR for Monero.
However, I believe the ISO standard is too cumbersome for cryptocurrency, even though ISO is studying the issue. My non-profit organization, through its BTRIC Institute initiative, is going to make available a repository of cryptocurrency symbols/codes, address namespaces, and TCP ports. We believe that building a trusted repository for this information will help the ecosystem as a whole. We are working hard to build our organization to accomplish this and other important goals.
Best regards,
Ben
Thank you so much, this is exactly the kind of explanation I was looking for. Very helpful.
As for your project, I too, believe it is very important to have a repository for cryptocurrency related topics, as it is confusing and a little bit free-for-all right now.
I do not know if this could help for your project, because you mentioned ISO, my uncle, has been working for ISO for a lots of years now and has written a lot of administrative/managements one himself.
Again do not know if this could help, but I would gladly put you in contact with him, if needed. Have a good day sir.
