ERC

ERC is an acronym for Ethereum Request for Comment. You’ll see this noted before a number for each type of token.

Every ERC standard starts out as an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP). Much like a law in the government, before any EIP can be adopted and put into place, it has to be discussed and amended until it is the “rough consensus” of the community that this standard will be helpful to the protocol.

If an EIP is adopted and it deals with the “application level”, like a token standard, a wallet format or a name registry, it becomes an ERC.

The number after the ERC is just the order in which its original EIP was introduced. A larger number means that the standard was adopted more recently.