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
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
36?	Add support for Catalyst multi-delegation
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
42?	New Plutus Builtin: dataHash
43?	Plutus Support For Pairings Over Curve Bls12-381
44?	Additional Factors For NFT Market Verification
45?	Decentralization: Using Pledge as a Bidding Param
46?	Prepay Min Fixed Fee
47?	Proposal for deep-link to desktop wallet app
50?	Liesenfelt Shelleys Voltaire Decentralization Update
989?	ISPO KYC_CDD

CIP creation process as a Sequence Diagram

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

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

• Matthias Benkort (@KtorZ)
• (Duncan Coutts (@dcoutts))
• Sebastien Guillemot (@SebastienGllmt)
• Frederic Johnson (@crptmppt)
• Robert Phair (@rphair)