ERC 20 or ERC 721 for my dapp?

Question

I am currently making a game where you collect gear pieces and upgrade them. There will not be a 1-1 upgrade, but rather 3-1, meaning 3 items may or may not upgrade to 1.

I am aware of the difference between the two different ERC standards, but as this is my first dapp I am not sure which 1 to go for. I am estimating there to be between 1m-10m different item-stat combinations. I am also hoping to add new layers of items in the future, so hoping for it to be a scalable solution.

Also, what may be a good implementation for the suggested token standard? I was thinking maybe an array of all ERC 721 tokens, with a map that layers account addresses to the array indexes. But then how will I fall with the empty array slots after I burn tokens?

Answer 1

In ERC-721, each token is completely unique and non-interchangeable with other tokens. The key features of both are:

• ERC-20: For money and money-like tokens.
• ERC-721: For things and thing-like tokens.

According to the nature of these tokens, nowadays most of the games are using ERC-721 tokens e.g. Cryptokitties because kitties are unique and non-interchangeable. In short, ERC-721 use for mostly digital collectables.

In your case there is such kind of upgrade which I am not sure whether about items or what. I suggest you to take a look on this guide of ERC-721 that how it is used in Cryptokitties.

Hope it will help.