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What is the point of broadcasting existence of a token ID with no initial balance in Ethereum?

In EIP-1155, it is stated that "To broadcast the existence of a token ID with no initial balance, the contract SHOULD emit the TransferSingle event from 0x0 to 0x0, with the token creator as _operator, and a _value of 0"

Could someone explain what practical use-cases this provides?

Solution

  • Broadcasting existence of a new token with no initial balance has a use case with minting NFTs (non-fungible tokens): You may want to mint a non-fungible token that doesn't belong to anyone yet and has no balance yet.

    Example: You are owner of a collectible cards contract where each card can be assigned points.

    • 1 card = 1 NFT
    • each card's point amount = each NFT's balance

    Now you want to make a competition where the winner gets this special card. So you mint the NFT representing the new card with 0 balance and no owner, and broadcast this information.

    Since the token is minted and exists at this point, you can show it on your web app or something, and also everyone can verify in the code, that the winner is really going go receive this exact token.

    After the competition is finished, the winner gets this token.