Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs)

A Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) is a formalised design document for the Cardano community and the name of the process by which such documents are produced and listed. A CIP provides information or describes a change to the Cardano ecosystem, processes, or environment concisely and in sufficient technical detail. In this CIP, we explain what a CIP is; how the CIP process functions; the role of the CIP Editors; and how users should go about proposing, discussing and structuring a CIP.

The Cardano Foundation intends CIPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new features, collecting community input on an issue, and documenting design decisions that have gone into Cardano. Plus, because CIPs are text files in a versioned repository, their revision history is the historical record of significant changes affecting Cardano.

Note For new CIP, a reference template is available in .github/CIP-TEMPLATE.md

Cardano Problem Statements (CPS)

A Cardano Problem Statement (CPS) is a formalised document for the Cardano ecosystem and the name of the process by which such documents are produced and listed. CPSs are meant to complement CIPs and live side-by-side in the CIP repository as first-class citizens.

Note For new CPS, a reference template is available in .github/CPS-TEMPLATE.md

Communication Channels

Extend or discuss ‘ideas’ in the Developer Forums, Cardano’s Official Developer Telegram Group or in #developers in Cardano Ambassadors Slack.

CIP editors will review discussions and progress in bi-weekly meetings held on Discord, then transcribe and summarise them in the BikweeklyMeetings folder.

CIP Editors meetings are public, recorded, and published on Youtube: do join and participate in discussions/PRs of significance to you.

Note To facilitate browsing and information sharing for non-Github users, an auto-generated site is also provided at cips.cardano.org.

Reviewed Proposals

#	Title	Status
1	CIP process	Active
2	Coin Selection Algorithms for Cardano	Active
3	Wallet key generation	Active
4	Wallet Checksums	Proposed
5	Common Bech32 Prefixes	Active
6	Stake Pool Extended Metadata	Draft
7	Curve Pledge Benefit	Proposed
8	Message Signing	Draft
9	Protocol Parameters (Shelley Era)	Active
10	Transaction Metadata Label Registry	Active
11	Staking key chain for HD wallets	Active
12	On-chain stake pool operator to delegates communication	Draft
13	Cardano URI Scheme	Proposed
14	User-Facing Asset Fingerprint	Active
15	Catalyst Registration Transaction Metadata Format	Active
16	Cryptographic Key Serialisation Formats	Active
17	Cardano Delegation Portfolio	Active
18	Multi-Stake-Keys Wallets	Draft
19	Cardano Addresses	Active
20	Transaction message/comment metadata	Active
21	Transaction requirements for interoperability with hardware wallets	Draft
22	Pool operator verification	Active
23	Fair Min Fees	Draft
24	Non-Centralizing Rankings	Draft
25	Media NFT Metadata Standard	Active
26	Cardano Off-Chain Metadata	Draft
27	CNFT Community Royalties Standard	Draft
28	Protocol Parameters (Alonzo Era)	Active
29	Phase-1 Monetary Scripts Serialization Formats	Active
30	Cardano dApp-Wallet Web Bridge	Active
31	Reference Inputs	Active
32	Inline Datums	Active
33	Reference Scripts	Active
34	Chain ID Registry	Draft
35	Plutus Core Evolution	Active
36	Catalyst/Voltaire Registration Transaction Metadata Format	Proposed
37	Dynamic Saturation Based on Pledge	Proposed
40	Collateral Output	Active
42	New Plutus Builtin: serialiseBuiltinData	Active
49	ECDSA and Schnorr signatures in Plutus Core	Proposed
52	Cardano Audit Best Practice Guidelines	Proposed
54	Cardano Smart NFTs	Draft
55	Protocol Parameters (Babbage Era)	Active
58	Plutus Bitwise Primitives	Proposed
59	Terminology Surrounding Core Features	Active
60	Music Token Metadata	Active
67	Asset Name Label Registry	Proposed
68	Datum Metadata Standard	Proposed
71	Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Proxy Voting Standard	Proposed
74	Set min-pool-cost to 0	Proposed
75	Fair Stake Pool Rewards	Inactive
80	Transaction Serialization Deprecation Cycle	Active
82	Improved Rewards Scheme Parameters	Inactive
83	Encrypted Transaction message/comment metadata (Addendum to CIP-0020)	Active
381	Plutus Support for Pairings Over BLS12-381	Proposed
1852	HD (Hierarchy for Deterministic) Wallets for Cardano	Active
1853	HD (Hierarchy for Deterministic) Stake Pool Cold Keys for Cardano	Active
1854	Multi-signatures HD Wallets	Draft
1855	Forging policy keys for HD Wallets	Active
9999	Cardano Problem Statements	Active

Last updated on 2023-03-15

💡 For more details about Statuses, refer to CIP-0001.

Proposals Under Review (CIP)

Below are listed tentative CIPs still under discussion with the community. They are listed below for easing navigation and tentatively allocating numbers to avoid later clashes.

#	Title
38?	Arbitrary Script as Native Script Spending Conditions
39?	Language Annotated Address
45?	Decentralized WebRTC dApp-Wallet Communication
46?	Merklised Plutus Scripts
48?	Extended NFT metadata
50?	Shelley's Voltaire Decentralization Update
56?	Treasury Donation
57?	Plutus Smart-Contract Blueprint
62?	Governance API for dApp Connectors
69?	Plutus Script Type Uniformization
70?	Rejected Ideas w.r.t Spending Policies
72?	DApp Registration
73?	Oracle Datum Standard
76?	Hash-Checked Data
77?	Verified Stake Pool Identity
79?	Implement Ouroboros Leios to increase Cardano throughput
80?	Transaction Serialization Deprecation Cycle
81?	Tiered Pricing Protocol
84?	Cardano Ledger Evolution
85?	Sums-of-products in Plutus Core
86?	NFT Metadata Update Oracles
87?	Maybe Datum
88?	Native Asset Policy Registration/Information Certificates
89?	Beacon Tokens & Distributed Dapps
90?	Extendable dApp-Wallet Web Bridge
91?	Don't force Built-In functions
92?	First-class errors in Plutus
1694?	A proposal for entering the Voltaire phase

Proposals Under Review (CPS)

Below are listed tentative CPSs still under discussion with the community. They are listed below for easing navigation and also tentatively allocating numbers to avoid clashes later on.

#	Title
1?	Metadata Discoverability and Trust
2?	Pointer Addresses
3?	Smart Tokens
4?	Spending Script Redundant Execution

Last updated on 2023-03-15

Stalled / Waiting For Authors

The following list contains proposals that have been under review and for which actions are now awaiting updates from their original authors. Proposals stalled for several months without any updates from their authors and will eventually be closed. However, authors are invited to re-open pull requests or open new ones should they want to bring the discussion back to life.

• UPLC Serialization Optimizations
• Address Resolution Through DNS
• Transferring Stake Pool Ownership
• Extended Local Chain Sync Protocol
• Tiered Pricing Protocol
• Properly burning NFTs/tokens
• NFT Metadata extension tag

Last updated on 2023-03-15

Editors

Matthias Benkort @KtorZ	Sebastien Guillemot @SebastienGllmt	Robert Phair @rphair	Ryan Williams @Ryun1