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What are Ethereum Improvement Proposals (or EIPs)?

Ethereum is an open source project with no one company or organization that controls the direction of the project. There is an open governance model where everyone is free to propose and discuss changes to the system. The EIP system is the forum to do this. You can view the EIP website here: https://eips.ethereum.org/

Some notable features of the EIP system are the submissions are open to everyone with a github account, which is very easy to get. The incorporation of a proposal into the platform is dictated by the quality of the idea rather than the reputation of the proposer.

There are several different stages that an EIP can be in. Draft EIPs are works in progress, are open for consideration and discussed on github. Accepted EIPs can be expected to be included in the next hard fork. Final EIPs are proposals that have already been adopted and deferred EIPs are not being considered for immediate adoption, but may be considered again in the future.

The structure of an EIP is important for clear and effective communication among so many project participants. An EIP includes the following sections:

• Preamble (metadata)
• Simple summary
• Abstract - A short description of the issue
• Motivation - Why is the existing protocol inadequate
• Specification - Describes the syntax and semantics of the new feature
• Rationale - Why did you make these design decisions?
• Backwards compatibility - Explain any backward incompatibilities and how they will be addressed
• Test Cases - These are mandatory for EIPs proposing consensus changes
• Implementation - What does an implementation of the EIP look like? This section must be completed before the EIP is given the status “Final”.

In practice, this system creates a set of community standards for changing the project.

EIP-20, a Standard Token Interface: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20

Let’s look at one of the most popular EIPs, EIP-20 which specifies a standardized token interface. The implementation specification enables easy interoperability between Ethereum tokens and allows applications with complex functionality to reliably handle Ethereum tokens.

The development of tokens on Ethereum is under active development. The following EIPs are in the draft phase. Explore these EIPs to follow the development of token standards.

https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-721
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-918
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-777
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1046
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1080
https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs
https://medium.com/@codetractio/walkthrough-of-an-ethereum-improvement-proposal-eip-6fda3966d171
https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20.md
https://theethereum.wiki/w/index.php/ERC20_Token_Standard
https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-721.md

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