Crypto glossary
Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)
An Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) is a design document that proposes a change to Ethereum, from core protocol rules to application standards.
Anyone can write an EIP. The process, described in EIP-1, moves a proposal through stages such as Draft, Review, Last Call and Final, with editors checking format and completeness. Core EIPs change consensus or execution rules and must ship in a coordinated hard fork; others cover networking, client interfaces or application-level conventions. Application standards are called ERCs, Ethereum Requests for Comments, and since 2023 live in their own repository.
EIP numbers are how the industry talks about Ethereum changes: EIP-1559 reformed fees, EIP-4844 added blobs for rollups, EIP-7702 let ordinary accounts act like smart accounts. Which core EIPs make it into an upgrade is decided by client developers on the public All Core Devs calls, after testing on devnets and testnets.
A Final status does not mean a proposal is live: an EIP can be finished as a document and never scheduled, and many drafts are abandoned. An EIP is also not a vote of token holders. Bitcoin uses a comparable but separate system called BIPs.
Example
Before an upgrade, developers publish a meta-EIP listing every proposal included in the hard fork, so node operators and wallets know exactly which changes to prepare for.