What is ERC-1155?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 5 min
In short
ERC-1155 is an Ethereum standard that lets a single contract manage both fungible tokens and NFTs. It can move several token types and quantities in one transaction, which suits use cases like game inventories where gas efficiency matters.
Key points
- One contract manages many token types at once
- Each ID carries a balance; a supply of one behaves as an NFT
- Batch transfers move several types in a single call
- Well suited to game items and ticketing
Definition
An Ethereum token standard in which one contract manages many token IDs, each with its own balance, so individual IDs can be fungible or non-fungible.
ERC-20 holds one asset per contract; ERC-721 holds many IDs but each with a supply of exactly one. ERC-1155 sits between: every ID carries a balance. One contract can hold '50 of ID 1, a healing potion' and '1 of ID 99, a legendary sword', where the latter behaves as an NFT.
Its signature feature is batch transfer: pass arrays of IDs and amounts and move them in a single transaction. For a game shuffling dozens of item types, that costs far less gas than sending ERC-721 tokens one by one. Adding a new item type also just means a new ID, not a new deployment.
The trade-off is concentration: with many assets under one contract, a bug or a permission problem there has a wide blast radius. Tools that assume one contract per collection also sometimes display these tokens awkwardly.
Watch out for
- · Assets concentrate in one contract, so a flaw there affects everything it holds
- · setApprovalForAll covers every ID you hold — check who you are granting it to
- · For game items, shutting down the game can leave the tokens with no use at all