• Cryptographic tokens represent a set of rules, encoded in a smart contract - the token contract. Every token belongs to a blockchain address.
• These token are accessible with a dedicated wallet. The wallet stores public key, private key and a seed phrase.
• Only the person who has the private key can access the respective token. So this person is called the custodian / owner of the token.
• If token represents:
  • An asset: the owner can initiate a transfer with their private key which will generate a digital fingerprint.
  • An access right to something: the owner can initiate access with their private key which will generate a digital fingerprint.
  • A voting right: the owner can vote with their private key which will generate a digital fingerprint.

• Token always needs validity and should have some in-built counterfeiting measure. Traditionally, centralized entities do this task like Central Banks making sure that their tokens, the coins / currency notes, are hard copy.
• The validity of cryptographic tokens is managed by the smart contracts that created it together with the underlying distributed ledger by majority consensus.
• The first blockchain tokens are native tokens. It simply means the tokens issued directly by through the blockchain. Their objective is to incentivize people who don’t know or trust each other to organize around a particular blockhain. Ethereum blockchain's native crypto is Ether.
• Howevery, Ethereum has changed the technology and tokens can now be issued on the application layer with a few lines of codes easily. Ethereum has developed a standardized smart contract which defines the common list of rules for Ethereum tokens, its called ERC-20.