Cardano Improvement Proposals

Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs)

Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) describe standards, processes; or provide general guidelines or information to the Cardano Community. It is a formal, technical communication process that exists off-chain. CIPs do not represent a commitment of any form towards existing projects. Rather, they are a collection of sensible and sound solutions to common problems within the Cardano ecosystem. CIPs evolves around different statuses, driven by one or more authors:

Status Description
Draft The idea has been formally accepted in the repository and is being worked on by its authors.
Proposed A working implementation exists, as well as a clear plan highlighting what is required for this CIP to transition to "Active".
Active The proposal is deemed to have met all the appropriate criteria to be considered Active.
On Hold The CIP author is not currently working on this effort.
Obsolete The CIP was either retired or made obsolete by a newer CIP.
Rejected There is some issue with the CIP that makes it not acceptable at this point.

It is therefore quite common for proposals and implementations to be worked on concomitantly. Even more so that a working implementation (when relevant) is a mandatory condition for reaching an Active status.

The entire process is described in greater detail in CIP1 - "CIP Process".

Reviewed Proposals (as of 2022-04-07)

# Title Status
1 CIP process Active
2 Coin Selection Algorithms for Cardano Active
3 Wallet key generation Active
4 Wallet Checksums Draft
5 Common Bech32 Prefixes Draft
6 Stake Pool Extended Metadata Draft
7 Curve Pledge Benefit Proposed
8 Message Signing Draft
9 Protocol Parameters 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 Draft
14 User-Facing Asset Fingerprint Draft
15 Catalyst Registration Transaction Metadata Format Draft
16 Cryptographic Key Serialisation Formats Draft
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 NFT Metadata Standard Draft
26 Cardano Off-Chain Metadata Draft
27 CNFT Community Royalties Standard Draft
28 Protocol Parameters (Alonzo) Draft
29 Phase-1 Monetary Scripts Serialization Formats Draft
30 Cardano dApp-Wallet Web Bridge Draft
31 Reference Inputs Draft
32 Inline Datums Draft
33 Reference Scripts Draft
34 Chain ID Registry Draft
35 Plutus Core Evolution Active
36 Catalyst/Voltaire Registration Transaction Metadata Format Proposed
1852 HD (Hierarchy for Deterministic) Wallets for Cardano Draft
1853 HD (Hierarchy for Deterministic) Stake Pool Cold Keys for Cardano Draft
1854 Multi-signatures HD Wallets Draft
1855 Forging policy keys for HD Wallets Draft

💡 For more details about Statuses, refer to CIP1.

Proposals Under Review (as of 2022-03-17)

Below are listed tentative CIPs still under discussion with the community. Discussions and progress will be reviewed by CIP editors in bi-weekly meetings. Note that they are listed below for easing navigation and also, tentatively allocating numbers to avoid clashes later on.

# Title
37? Dynamic Saturation Based on Pledge
38? On-Chain Token Metadata Standard
39? Smart Contract Software Licenses
40? Collateral Output
41? Collateral Rewards
42? New Plutus Builtin: serialiseBuiltinData
43? ~~New Plutus Builtin: dataHash~~
44? Additional Factors For NFT Market Verification
45? Decentralization: Using Pledge as a Bidding Param
46? Prepay Min Fixed Fee
47? Deep-Link to Desktop Wallet App
48? Extended NFT metadata
49? ECDSA and Schnorr signatures in Plutus Core
50? Liesenfelt Shelleys Voltaire Decentralization Update
51? Preserve Submitter's Ordering of Transaction Inputs
52? Cardano Audit Best Practice Guidelines
53? Light Wallet Backend Connection
381? Plutus Support For Pairings Over Curve Bls12-381
989? ISPO KYC_CDD

CIP creation process as a Sequence Diagram

  “Alice has a Cardano idea she'd like to build more formally…”

Diagram: Mary interacting with community and editors for a Cardano Proposal

Extend or discuss ‘ideas’ in the Developer Forums, Cardano’s Official Developer Telegram Group or in #developers in Cardano Ambassadors Slack. CIP Editors meetings are public, recorded and summarized: do join and participate for discussions/PRs of significances to you.

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

Current Editors