BEP-20 vs ERC-20: Do you really understand token standards?

Understanding Token Standards from Scratch

Do you remember? In the early days of cryptocurrency, creating a new coin was particularly difficult—either you had to build your own chain or you could only follow Bitcoin. It wasn't until Ethereum appeared that the ERC-20 token standard made it much easier to create coins. There was no need to build a chain; you just had to write a contract according to the rules.

Later, Binance also wanted to get a share of the pie and launched BSC (BNB Smart Chain), conveniently creating the BEP-20 token standard. To put it simply, BEP-20 is the twin brother of ERC-20 on BSC.

What Can BEP-20 Do? Revealing 4 Core Parameters

It looks complicated, but actually it's just these four things:

Blacklist → Block bad accounts to prevent malice

Mintable → Can continue to print coins, inflation tool

Burnable → Can burn coins, reduce supply, and raise prices (used by many projects)

Can be paused → Can urgently stop trading when an attack occurs (but this is a bit centralized, which is not favored in the blockchain community)

How different are ERC-20 and BEP-20?

To be honest: pretty much.

Both can achieve transfer, issuance, and ownership management. Binance has also built a “cross-chain bridge” that allows the coins of the two chains to be converted into each other (Peg-in process), and does not charge any fees.

So you can think of it this way: a coin on Ethereum is ERC-20, and when transferred to Binance Smart Chain, it becomes BEP-20. The functionality remains unchanged; it's just a change in the address prefix (both start with “0x”).

Why distinguish between the two?

There used to be people who saw this as a “Ethereum vs Binance” war. But now Web3 emphasizes compatibility and interoperability, making this issue less significant. The key is that both chains can innovate together, rather than fighting against each other.

Quick Q&A

Can a BEP-20 address hold Ethereum coins? No, you must first convert them to BEP-20 using a bridge before transferring.

Does my wallet support BEP-20? Mainstream wallets like OKX Wallet and MetaMask support it, check the wallet documentation yourself.

Do I need to understand this if I just want to trade? No need to go too deep, just knowing that “coins on different chains may have different standards” is enough.