What are improvement proposals (EIPs/BIPs)?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 5 min
In short
An improvement proposal is a written, numbered way for anyone to suggest a change to a blockchain's specification. BIPs on Bitcoin and EIPs on Ethereum are the best-known examples: a proposal is published, debated, implemented and only then adopted. The key point is that a proposal existing and a proposal being live are two very different things.
Key points
- A public process for proposing spec changes as numbered documents
- Anyone can submit; adoption is a separate step
- Each one carries a status such as Draft, Review or Final
- Token standards (ERCs) come through the same pipeline
Definition
A documented process in which changes to a blockchain's specification or standards are published in a fixed format with a number, then debated, implemented and adopted. BIPs, EIPs and ERCs all follow it.
On a network with no central administrator, the question of who decides on spec changes has to be answered somehow. Improvement proposals answer it by requiring the change, its motivation, the technical specification and its backwards-compatibility impact to be written up in a fixed format, numbered and published — leaving a record anyone can trace later.
Proposals carry a status: Draft while being written, Review, Final once adopted, Withdrawn if abandoned. A proposal that has merely been assigned a number means only that the document was accepted, not that the network adopted the change. News coverage frequently blurs this.
Ethereum separates Core EIPs, which change the protocol itself, from ERCs, which define application-layer standards. Token standards such as ERC-20 and ERC-721 came from the latter track, which means their dominance reflects voluntary adoption by developers rather than any mandate.
Watch out for
- · Coverage often reports a published proposal as a decision — check its status field
- · Even an accepted proposal does nothing until nodes actually upgrade
- · Fake announcements and scam sites sometimes cite real proposal numbers