Fabian Vogelsteller opened issue 20 in Ethereum's public proposals repository at 09:52 UTC on November 19, 20151. His GitHub handle is frozeman. The post was short: six functions and two events that any token contract could share. One function reports a balance. Another moves tokens. A third lets someone else spend them for you, up to a limit you set.
Why would six functions matter so much? The final text, credited to Vogelsteller and Vitalik Buterin, answers in one line. “A standard interface allows any tokens on Ethereum to be re-used by other applications: from wallets to decentralized exchanges,” it says2. Build a wallet for one such token, and it works for all of them.
That line now covers a large share of crypto's dollars. On October 13, 2026, DefiLlama counted $313.01 billion in dollar stablecoins across 341 coins14. Ethereum held $147.05 billion of it, or 47.0 percent. This story follows the post from a comment thread to the token sales of 2017 and the stablecoins of 2026.
A post with six functions
Vogelsteller joined Ethereum's core team in January 2015, six months before the network went live5. He was its lead developer for apps. His work included Mist, the first web3 browser, and Web3.js. Buterin had sketched a token idea first, and the issue links that earlier page as its history1.
The naming story comes from Vogelsteller himself. In a 2023 interview, he said: “I called it an Ethereum Request for Comment because I just wanted to have comments.”4 The number came the same way. "And I thought we’d issue a number randomly, like 20," Vogelsteller told Cointelegraph.
He also gave Buterin the credit for the seed. “In 2015, I proposed ERC20, a standard for tokens based on a draft from Vitalik,” Vogelsteller told HackerNoon in March 20255. The issue drew 362 comments by GitHub's count1.
Both sides, in their own words
Did one GitHub post set the shape of crypto's money?
“In 2015, I proposed ERC20, a standard for tokens based on a draft from Vitalik”
“By and large, the structures of initial coin offerings that I have seen promoted involve the offer and sale of securities and directly implicate the securities registration requirements and other investor protection provisions of our federal securities laws”
What the 2017 coverage missed
Two dates sit far apart in the record. Issue 20 went up on November 19, 20151. The standard landed as a file in the repository on September 11, 2017, marked Accepted3. Vogelsteller opened that pull request on April 24, 2017. Its first line reads: “The following is moving the ERC 20 token standard from #20 to a PR.”
So the token sales of mid-2017 ran on a standard that issue 20 still listed as a draft1. ICObench, a site that rated token sales, counted $764,356,905 raised in June 2017 alone, across 28 sales6. Later coverage blurred the start date. Cointelegraph's 2023 interview opens by placing Vogelsteller's call for comments in 20184. GitHub shows November 2015.
The token sale years
ICObench kept a running table, and the Internet Archive saved copies. Its pages count only the sales listed on the site6. Even so, they show the rise and the fall.
In January 2018 the site listed 1,542 token sales from 163 countries6. December 2017 had raised $1.39 billion across 212 sales. By December 2018 the count was 5,064, and 4,461 of those ran on Ethereum7. March 2018 topped that table at $1.75 billion from 229 sales.
By January 2020 the site listed 5,673 sales8. Of those, 4,924 ran on Ethereum, or 86.8 percent. December 2019 raised $38.6 million.
The biggest entry tells the story best. ICObench lists EOS at $4.2 billion, the largest sale on its table8. EOS was a rival blockchain. Its sale still ran as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. The SEC's 2019 order says Block.one sold 900 million "ERC-20 Tokens" for Ether from June 26, 2017, to June 1, 201810. At the close, about 330,690 wallet addresses held them. About 75 percent sat in 100 wallets.
Stablecoins run on the same six functions
A stablecoin is a token built to hold one US dollar of value, such as Tether's USDT. These coins show the shape most clearly. Tether issues USDT on many chains, and the two biggest are Ethereum and Tron13.
Tron built its token standard to match that interface. Its developer docs, published by TRON, say: “TRC-20 is the fungible token standard on TRON, fully compatible with Ethereum's ERC-20 at the interface level.”12 Most Solidity code written for ERC-20 runs on TRON with minimal changes, the docs add.
USDT on Tron first passed USDT on Ethereum on April 14, 2021, in DefiLlama's daily series13. The two have traded the lead 11 times, counting that first pass. At 00:00 UTC on October 13, 2026, Tron held $93.24 billion of USDT. Ethereum held $73.20 billion.
Tron held $93.24 billion of Tether's USDT on Oct. 13, 2026, and Ethereum $73.20 billion
USDT in circulation on each chain, Jan. 1 and July 1 from 2020 and Oct. 13, 2026, in $ billions
- USDT on Ethereum
- USDT on Tron
- Height: USDT on the chain, $ billions
Source: DefiLlama [13].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | USDT on Ethereum | USDT on Tron |
|---|---|---|
| Jan. 2020 | $2.28B | $0.92B |
| July 2020 | $5.90B | $2.88B |
| Jan. 2021 | $12.99B | $6.80B |
| July 2021 | $27.51B | $29.88B |
| Jan. 2022 | $34.33B | $36.96B |
| July 2022 | $28.21B | $27.53B |
| Jan. 2023 | $28.00B | $31.72B |
| July 2023 | $35.86B | $40.55B |
| Jan. 2024 | $37.44B | $46.31B |
| July 2024 | $43.70B | $57.22B |
| Jan. 2025 | $64.55B | $57.69B |
| July 2025 | $63.65B | $80.30B |
| Jan. 2026 | $87.16B | $81.02B |
| July 2026 | $78.93B | $87.78B |
| Oct. 2026 | $73.20B | $93.24B |
Across every dollar stablecoin, Ethereum held $147.05 billion and Tron $94.79 billion at 03:56 UTC on October 13, 202614. Together that is 77.3 percent of the $313.01 billion total. USD Coin, issued by Circle, kept $44.89 billion of its $72.86 billion on Ethereum. Sky's USDS sits almost wholly there, and Dai keeps $4.17 billion of its $4.75 billion there.
Tron held $93.17 billion of USDT on Oct. 13, 2026, more than Ethereum's $73.14 billion
Supply of the five largest US-dollar stablecoins, split by chain, in billions of US dollars
- On Ethereum
- On Tron
- On every other chain
Source: DefiLlama [14].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | On Ethereum | On Tron | On every other chain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tether USDT | $73.14B | $93.17B | $17.72B |
| USD Coin USDC | $44.89B | $0.03B | $27.94B |
| Sky USDS | $7.14B | $0.00B | $0.01B |
| Ethena USDe | $2.48B | $0.00B | $2.28B |
| Dai DAI | $4.17B | $0.00B | $0.58B |
The case for one shape
Vogelsteller makes the case in his own words. “It became the first smart contract standard and one of the most important changes to the Ethereum ecosystem, kicking off ICOs, DeFi, NFTs and now Memecoins,” he told HackerNoon's Ishan Pandey5. Note the verb. He claims the start, and he names four waves that came after it.
He also names the practical gain. “Suddenly it became super easy for people to create tokens and we got projects that before had to launch a whole network, now could simply raise money to build out their protocols,” Vogelsteller said5. The EOS sale fits that sentence exactly: a new chain raised its money on an old one10.
Later standards borrowed the pattern. ERC-721, the standard for one-of-a-kind tokens, names ERC-20 as its inspiration in its own text11.
The case against
Jay Clayton, then chairman of the SEC, answered the boom on December 11, 20179. “By and large, the structures of initial coin offerings that I have seen promoted involve the offer and sale of securities and directly implicate the securities registration requirements and other investor protection provisions of our federal securities laws,” Clayton said. He added a plain count. “Investors should understand that to date no initial coin offerings have been registered with the SEC.”
The largest ERC-20 sale ended in his agency's files. An SEC order of September 30, 2019, found that Block.one's ERC-20 tokens were securities10. Block.one agreed to pay a $24 million civil penalty.
Vogelsteller has doubts of his own. “But funny enough the ERC20 token standard really pulled that all even stronger into tokens and trading,” he told HackerNoon5. He sees a lock-in too. “Everyone adopted ERC20, that means you won’t be able to improve those standards and how they relate to the accounts at all,” Vogelsteller said. He now builds LUKSO, a separate chain, to test new standards there.
What to watch
Each side needs a different fact. Vogelsteller's case holds while the dollars stay on chains that speak ERC-20. On October 13, 2026, that meant 47.0 percent on Ethereum and 30.3 percent on Tron14.
Clayton's case rests on enforcement records such as the Block.one order10. A new order that names an ERC-20 sale would add to it.
Start with the USDT race. DefiLlama updates it daily, and Tron led by $20.04 billion on October 13, 202613.
Sources
- Fabian Vogelsteller (frozeman), "ERC: Token standard (issue #20)," Ethereum EIPs (GitHub), Nov. 19, 2015, https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/20
- Fabian Vogelsteller, Vitalik Buterin, "ERC-20: Token Standard," Ethereum EIPs (eips.ethereum.org), created Nov. 19, 2015, https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20
- Fabian Vogelsteller (frozeman), "ERC20 Token Standard (pull request #610)," Ethereum EIPs (GitHub), opened Apr. 24, 2017, merged Sept. 11, 2017, https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/610
- Zhiyuan Sun, "ERC-20 inventor discusses origins, new blockchains, BRC-20 and more," Cointelegraph, July 26, 2023, https://cointelegraph.com/news/erc-20-inventor-discusses-origins-new-blockchains-brc-20
- Ishan Pandey, "The Man Behind ERC20 Wants to Make Web3 Human with LUKSO," HackerNoon, Mar. 18, 2025, https://hackernoon.com/the-man-behind-erc20-wants-to-make-web3-human-with-lukso
- ICObench, "Stats and Facts," Internet Archive copy of Jan. 16, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20180116144640/https://icobench.com/stats
- ICObench, "Stats and Facts," Internet Archive copy of Dec. 5, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20181205153424/https://icobench.com/stats
- ICObench, "Stats and Facts," Internet Archive copy of Jan. 3, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20200103173157/https://icobench.com/stats
- Jay Clayton, "Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Dec. 11, 2017, https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-clayton-2017-12-11
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "In the Matter of Block.one, Order Instituting Cease-and-Desist Proceedings, Release No. 33-10714," Sept. 30, 2019, https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2019/33-10714.pdf
- William Entriken, Dieter Shirley, Jacob Evans, Nastassia Sachs, "ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard," Ethereum EIPs (eips.ethereum.org), created Jan. 24, 2018, https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-721
- TRON Developer Hub, "TRC-20," read Oct. 13, 2026, https://developers.tron.network/docs/trc20
- DefiLlama, "Tether USDT: circulating supply by chain (stablecoin id 1)," read 03:55 UTC on Oct. 13, 2026, https://stablecoins.llama.fi/stablecoin/1
- DefiLlama, "Stablecoins: circulating supply by chain," read 03:56 UTC on Oct. 13, 2026, https://stablecoins.llama.fi/stablecoins?includePrices=true