Read on Twitter
For those in the #Cardano community who've been a bit out of the loop recently, here is a short thread on Native Tokens, one of the key things under development right now
Definitions: an *asset* is just any abstract form of value. We represent them in Cardano as assetID := (policyID, asset name), were the policyID describes how tokens are minted.
A *token* is simply a representation of an asset in the blockchain, in its basic accounting unit. It could be 1 ADA or 1 VicenteCoin.
In this context, *native* means that tokens in Cardano can be minted and tracked by the ledger without requiring smart-contract logic. It is rather an extension of the UTXO model that includes tokens. This has several advantages, as you may guess.
One of the cool implications of this approach is that you can send multiple tokens within the same transaction, as long as you provide the minimum ADA required for each output. Similarly, you can mint/burn multiple different tokens in a single tx.
Also, there is no execution overhead for ordinary transfer txs (so no extra computation fee). The same value preservation policy of UTXO chains applies.
Tx fees, deposit certificates and staking rewards will remain payable only in ADA. Personally I don't think we'll see this changing anytime soon since it has multiple implications in client complexity.
For more details you can check:
https://developers.cardano.org/en/development-environments/native-tokens/native-tokens/ https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2020/12/09/native-tokens-on-cardano-core-principles-and-points-of-difference/
https://developers.cardano.org/en/development-environments/native-tokens/native-tokens/ https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2020/12/09/native-tokens-on-cardano-core-principles-and-points-of-difference/
One thing that it's not clear to me yet is where and how are minting policies stored. They mention it's going to be off-chain, but this has some intricacies (it may not be an issue at all if token issuance is centralised, but it may become trickier for a DAO)
