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

#	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	Active
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	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	NFT Metadata Standard	Active
26	Cardano Off-Chain Metadata	Draft
27	CNFT Community Royalties Standard	Draft
28	Protocol Parameters (Alonzo)	Active
29	Phase-1 Monetary Scripts Serialization Formats	Active
30	Cardano dApp-Wallet Web Bridge	Draft
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
52	Cardano Audit Best Practice Guidelines	Proposed
54	Cardano Smart NFTs	Draft
55	Babbage Era's coinsPerUTxOByte	Proposed
59	Terminology Surrounding Core Features	Active
60	Music Token Metadata	Proposed
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

Last updated on 2022-09-27

💡 For more details about Statuses, refer to CIP1.

Proposals Under Review

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

#	Title
38?	Arbitrary Script as Native Script Spending Conditions
39?	Language Annotated Address
41?	UPLC Serialization Optimizations
43?	Address Resolution Through DNS
44?	Additional Factors For NFT Market Verification
45?	Decentralization: Using Pledge as a Bidding Param
46?	Prepay Min Fixed Fee
47?	Hardfork Safety Mechanism
48?	Extended NFT metadata
49?	ECDSA and Schnorr signatures in Plutus Core
50?	Shelley's Voltaire Decentralization Update
51?	Preserve Submitter's Ordering of Transaction Inputs
56?	Treasury Donation
57?	On-Chain Script Blueprint
58?	Plutus Bitwise Primitives
62?	Governance API for dApp Connectors
63?	Transferring Stake Pool Ownership
66?	NFT Identity / W3C DID on Cardano
67?	Asset Name Label Registry
68?	Datum Metadata Standard
69?	Plutus Script Type Uniformization
70?	Rejected Ideas w.r.t Spending Policies
989?	ISPO KYC_CDD
2551?	Ed25519 Elliptic Curve Group Primitives in Plutus Core

Last updated on 2022-09-27

Stalled / Waiting For Authors

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

• On-Chain Token Metadata Standard
• Smart Contract Software Licenses
• collateral rewards
• Deep-Link to Desktop Wallet App
• Light Wallet Backend Connection

Last updated on 2022-09-27

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 and recorded: do join and participate for discussions/PRs of significance 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

Frederic Johnson @crptmppt	Matthias Benkort @KtorZ	Sebastien Guillemot @SebastienGllmt	Robert Phair @rphair