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Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)
The standard format for documents proposing changes to Bitcoin.
What Is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal?
Bitcoin, as an open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency, has no hierarchical or defined organizational structure. As a result, a generally agreed-upon standard for the introduction of new ideas and development to Bitcoin was required.
The first BIP was issued in 2011 by British-Iranian programmer Amir Taaki, 2 years after Bitcoin was created, setting out the format of the BIP itself, and taking inspiration from the system of proposals for changes to the Python language. Every BIP is publicly available on GitHub. Bitcoin Improvement Proposals normally fall into one of three categories: Standards Track, Informational, and Process.
As an open-source project, anyone with the desire or skill can submit a BIP. Before becoming a formal BIP, BIPs go through a drafting or “triaging” process — beginning with a draft sent to the bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org mailing list. The proposed BIP will either be proposed, rejected, withdrawn or deferred. If given the go-ahead, it will be published as a draft to the Bitcoin Core GitHub repository of BIPs, where the community can review and work on transparently.
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