Please note that ERCs were recently separated from the EIPs repo.
The goal of ERCs is to standardize and provide high-quality documentation for the Ethereum application layer. This repository tracks past and ongoing improvements application standards in the form of ERCs. EIP-1 governs how EIPs and ERCs are published.
The status page tracks and lists both EIPs and ERCs, which can be divided into the following categories:
- Core EIPs are improvements to the Ethereum consensus protocol.
- Networking EIPs specify the peer-to-peer networking layer of Ethereum.
- Interface EIPs standardize interfaces to Ethereum, which determine how users and applications interact with the blockchain.
- ERCs specify application layer standards, which determine how applications running on Ethereum can interact with each other.
- Meta EIPs are miscellaneous improvements that nonetheless require some sort of consensus.
- Informational EIPs are non-standard improvements that do not require any form of consensus.
Before you write an ERC, ideas MUST be thoroughly discussed on Ethereum Magicians or Ethereum Research. Once consensus is reached, thoroughly read and review EIP-1, which describes the EIP/ERC process.
Please note that this repository is for documenting standards and not for help implementing them. These types of inquiries should be directed to the Ethereum Stack Exchange. For specific questions and concerns regarding ERCs, it's best to comment on the relevant discussion thread of the ERC denoted by the discussions-to tag in the ERC's preamble.
If you would like to become an EIP Editor, please read EIP-5069.
The canonical URL for an ERC that has achieved draft status at any point is at https://eips.ethereum.org/. For example, the canonical URL for EIP-1 is https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1.
Consider any document not published at https://eips.ethereum.org/ as a working paper. Additionally, consider published EIPs with a status of "draft", "review", or "last call" to be incomplete drafts, and note that their specification is likely to be subject to change.