📜 Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP
A formal, numbered document that proposes a change to the Ethereum network. It is the official way anyone says "here is how Ethereum should change," so the community can discuss it, refine it, and adopt it if it passes.
🏛️ The simple version — a proposed amendment to a public rulebook
Think of Ethereum as a shared rulebook that thousands of computers run. When someone wants to change a rule or add a new one, they cannot just edit the book. They write an EIP: a numbered proposal, like a bill submitted to a public assembly. Anyone can draft one. It is debated openly, experts review it, and only after it passes the process does it become a rule everyone follows. EIPs are the main way Ethereum handles governance and protocol upgrades.
🔢 What does an EIP number mean?
Every proposal gets its own number, like EIP-1559 or EIP-20. The number is just an ID, not a ranking. It moves through a public lifecycle of statuses, roughly Idea → Draft → Review → Last Call → Final. Core developers, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, review proposals to keep upgrades safe and effective. Reaching Final is not guaranteed; plenty of EIPs stall or get withdrawn along the way.
🗂️ The three types of EIP
| Type | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 🛠️ Standards Track | Changes most Ethereum software cares about. Includes Core (protocol changes that need a network upgrade), Networking, Interface, and ERC (application and token standards) |
| 📋 Meta | A process or procedural change rather than code. Not optional to ignore, and often needs community consensus |
| 📝 Informational | Design notes and guidelines. Users are free to follow them or ignore them |
📌 The exact list of lifecycle statuses can shift over time, so treat the stages above as the shape of the journey, not a fixed legal sequence.
🪙 EIP vs ERC — a token standard, not a core change
You will often hear "ERC-20 token." An ERC (Ethereum Request for Comments) is a subcategory of EIP for application-level standards, mostly token standards. Every ERC is an EIP, but not every EIP is an ERC. The key difference: an ERC sets shared rules that apps and wallets agree to follow, and it does not change Ethereum's core protocol.
- 🟢 ERC-20 (formally EIP-20) — the fungible-token standard most crypto tokens follow
- 🖼️ ERC-721 (formally EIP-721) — the standard most NFTs follow
⛽ A famous core EIP — EIP-1559
EIP-1559 shipped in the London hard fork in August 2021, and most ETH users felt it. It replaced the old fee auction with a protocol-set base fee plus an optional priority tip, which made gas fees more predictable. The base fee is then burned (permanently removed), which makes ETH partly deflationary. That is a Core EIP at work: a real protocol change that needed a coordinated upgrade to go live.
❓ FAQ
- Does an EIP become a rule the moment it is approved?
- No. An EIP is a proposal and a spec, not an automatic switch. It has to pass open discussion and review, and a Core EIP also needs to be coded and shipped in a coordinated network upgrade before it does anything. Many EIPs never reach the Final stage.
- What is the difference between an EIP and an ERC?
- An ERC is a subcategory of EIP for application and token standards, like ERC-20 for fungible tokens. All ERCs are EIPs, but not all EIPs are ERCs. ERCs set shared rules that apps and wallets agree to follow; they do not change Ethereum's core protocol.
- Can anyone write an EIP?
- Yes. You do not need to be a core developer to submit one. After you write it, it gets a number and moves through a public lifecycle, and core developers including Vitalik Buterin review it to keep upgrades safe and effective.