Wrapped Ethereum (WETH)

From CryptoCurrency Wiki

Basics

"Wrapping ETH allows you to trade directly with alt tokens. The reason you need wETH is to be able to trade ETH for other ERC-20 tokens on decentralized platforms like Radar Relay. Because decentralized platforms running on Ethereum use smart contracts to facilitate trades directly between users, every user needs to have the same standardised format for every token they trade. This ensures tokens don’t get lost in translation.

When you "wrap" ETH, you aren't really wrapping so much as trading via a smart contract for an equal token called wETH. If you want to get plain ETH back you need to "unwrap" it. AKA trade it back for plain ETH."

  • On the future of wETH:

"Steps are being taken to update the ETH codebase to make it compliant with its own ERC-20 standards. Weird, we know. Additionally, ERC-20 may be replaced by other standards as problems and solutions arise. There's already a ERC223 in the works."

Team