How can I create tokens in smart contract from node.js?

Question

I have followed the tutorial at https://www.ethereum.org/token to deploy a contract with a certain number of tokens. I have also implemented functions to mint new tokens or burn existing tokens.

However, I want to list tokens, create tokens, and delete tokens from a node.js project. I don't really understand how this can be done since it costs gas/ether to communicate with the Ethereum blockchain.

Is it possible to initiate actions in the blockchain from "off-chain" projects? Can I use web3 or truffle for this purpose? I imagine that it might be possible to just store a lot of ether on an account and then just tell the smart contract to use ether from this account to update tokens in the smart contract?

I have seen projects where I can communicate with the contracts using MetaMask, but I want to develop a project that doesn't require the user to have a wallet at all.

Answer 1

Any modification to the Ethereum Blockchain will cost you gas, so yeah creating new coins will cost you money.

Listing them is free, you have the ability, throught web3, to list informations about blocks, accounts or smart contracts.

So if you want to list coins, you can make a scraper that goes through all the Blockchain and detects ERC20 Contracts (take a look at how EVM bytecode works and how you can identify specific methods defined in protocols like ERC20 only from the bytecode) for free.

Remember: Only state alteration costs gas !