The real difference is where the balance lives: a coin in the chain's own state, a token in a smart contract's storage on a chain you do not control. The common line — a coin runs on its own blockchain, a token on someone else's — is close enough for a tweet and wrong enough to cost you.
- Coin — ledger: the chain itself. Gas: the coin. Supply: protocol rule. Count per chain: one.
- Token — ledger: a contract. Gas: the native coin of that chain. Supply: contract code. Count per chain: many.
The examples are in your wallet. ETH is a coin. FRAX is a token, an ERC-20 on Ethereum, issued by Frax Finance. Curve Finance pools trade tokens, like every swap front-end; when Frax Swap shows a pair, the two sides are contracts, not chains.
The mechanism the usual explanation skips: a token never moves. The contract changes a number in its ledger; the chain records that as a transaction, paid in the native coin. You cannot send a token on a chain where you hold no coin — the update still has to be mined. The asset moves through contract logic; the network moves only the record.
What the distinction decides
The choice turns on size, speed and budget. A token is one contract deployment: an afternoon, a few hundred dollars of gas, and you inherit the chain's security and throughput limits. A coin is a new chain: validators, consensus, bootstrap, years, and a security model you own.
The edge case: the same asset can be both. Ether is a coin on Ethereum; wrapped, it is wETH, an ERC-20 token. The asset did not change — the installation did. Coin and token are not categories of asset; they are categories of accounting.
Making the choice
What you hold changes what you can do and what you risk. A token's safety sits in the contract's code; a coin's safety sits in the chain's consensus. Both fail, and they fail differently.
When the route is a swap, the venue is a separate decision. Frax Swap is one of the venues that decision can land on.
FAQ
Is a stablecoin a coin?
No. FRAX and USDC are ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. "Stablecoin" describes the peg, not the accounting layer.
Can a token become a coin?
Only by moving to its own chain. As with wETH, the asset stays a token meanwhile; the representation changes.
Which is safer?
Neither. A coin carries the chain's consensus risk; a token carries that plus the contract's own risk. For small amounts it rarely matters; for a treasury it decides.