ERC-1155
In short: ERC-1155 is a digital token standard on Ethereum, first proposed by developers at Enjin, that lets a single smart contract manage many kinds of tokens at…
ERC-1155 is a digital token standard on Ethereum, first proposed by developers at Enjin, that lets a single smart contract manage many kinds of tokens at once. It was designed to be more efficient than older token standards and to offer more security when tokens are transferred.
Why it matters
Under ERC-20 and ERC-721, each fungible token or NFT collection usually needs its own contract, and every transfer is a separate transaction. ERC-1155 keeps many token types in one contract, whether fungible or non-fungible, and supports batch transfers that move several items in one transaction to save gas. Its security gain comes from "safe transfer" rules. When tokens are sent to a smart contract, the receiving contract must confirm that it can handle them, or the transfer is reversed. This reduces the risk of tokens getting stuck in contracts that cannot move them again, a known weakness of ERC-20. The standard is popular in blockchain games and in NFT collections with many copies of each item.
Example
A game studio deploys one ERC-1155 contract. Token ID 1 is the game's gold coin, which is fungible, so many identical units exist. Token ID 2 is a legendary sword with only one copy, which makes it non-fungible. A player who wins a battle can receive 50 gold coins and the sword in one batch transfer instead of two separate transactions.