What Is CIP (Cardano Improvement Proposal)?
Also known as: Cardano Improvement Proposal
In short
A CIP (Cardano Improvement Proposal) is the formal proposal document in which changes to the Cardano protocol, its standards or its processes are publicly proposed, discussed and documented; it is Cardano's counterpart to Bitcoin's BIP and Ethereum's EIP processes.
CIPs are published in the Cardano Foundation's public repository on GitHub. Anyone can submit a proposal; proposals go through review by CIP editors and community discussion, and when found suitable in terms of format and scope, they are numbered and accepted. Each proposal follows a common template with sections such as motivation, technical specification and rationale. Proposals are divided into categories such as ledger rules, smart contracts (Plutus), wallets, tokens and metadata.
Some CIPs have become standards widely used in the ecosystem. CIP-25 defines the NFT metadata format, while CIP-30 defines communication between browser wallets and decentralized applications. CIP-1694 forms the basis of Cardano's on-chain governance model. Such common standards ensure that wallets, exchanges and applications developed by different teams work compatibly with one another.
The acceptance of a CIP does not mean that the protocol changes automatically. Proposals that change the ledger rules take effect only when they are implemented in the node software and activated through a hard fork; the adoption of application and wallet standards, on the other hand, depends on developers' choice.
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