I may be misunderstanding your question, but I believe it boils down to "Does my smart contract need to have a selling
function in order for my token to traded on an exchange?"
The answer to this questions is not necessarily needed.
An exchange allows for fiat currencies or other crpytocurrencies to be traded for each other at an agreed upon price then act as the middle man for the transferring of those currencies.
Buy
and Sell
functions can be found in advance coins such as with this example from ethereum's website.
contract MyAdvancedToken is owned, TokenERC20 {
uint256 public sellPrice;
uint256 public buyPrice;
mapping (address => bool) public frozenAccount;
/* This generates a public event on the blockchain that will notify clients */
event FrozenFunds(address target, bool frozen);
/* Initializes contract with initial supply tokens to the creator of the contract */
function MyAdvancedToken(
uint256 initialSupply,
string tokenName,
string tokenSymbol
) TokenERC20(initialSupply, tokenName, tokenSymbol) public {}
/* Internal transfer, only can be called by this contract */
function _transfer(address _from, address _to, uint _value) internal {
require (_to != 0x0); // Prevent transfer to 0x0 address. Use burn() instead
require (balanceOf[_from] >= _value); // Check if the sender has enough
require (balanceOf[_to] + _value >= balanceOf[_to]); // Check for overflows
require(!frozenAccount[_from]); // Check if sender is frozen
require(!frozenAccount[_to]); // Check if recipient is frozen
balanceOf[_from] -= _value; // Subtract from the sender
balanceOf[_to] += _value; // Add the same to the recipient
Transfer(_from, _to, _value);
}
/// @notice Create `mintedAmount` tokens and send it to `target`
/// @param target Address to receive the tokens
/// @param mintedAmount the amount of tokens it will receive
function mintToken(address target, uint256 mintedAmount) onlyOwner public {
balanceOf[target] += mintedAmount;
totalSupply += mintedAmount;
Transfer(0, this, mintedAmount);
Transfer(this, target, mintedAmount);
}
/// @notice `freeze? Prevent | Allow` `target` from sending & receiving tokens
/// @param target Address to be frozen
/// @param freeze either to freeze it or not
function freezeAccount(address target, bool freeze) onlyOwner public {
frozenAccount[target] = freeze;
FrozenFunds(target, freeze);
}
/// @notice Allow users to buy tokens for `newBuyPrice` eth and sell tokens for `newSellPrice` eth
/// @param newSellPrice Price the users can sell to the contract
/// @param newBuyPrice Price users can buy from the contract
function setPrices(uint256 newSellPrice, uint256 newBuyPrice) onlyOwner public {
sellPrice = newSellPrice;
buyPrice = newBuyPrice;
}
/// @notice Buy tokens from contract by sending ether
function buy() payable public {
uint amount = msg.value / buyPrice; // calculates the amount
_transfer(this, msg.sender, amount); // makes the transfers
}
/// @notice Sell `amount` tokens to contract
/// @param amount amount of tokens to be sold
function sell(uint256 amount) public {
require(this.balance >= amount * sellPrice); // checks if the contract has enough ether to buy
_transfer(msg.sender, this, amount); // makes the transfers
msg.sender.transfer(amount * sellPrice); // sends ether to the seller. It's important to do this last to avoid recursion attacks
}
}