Similar to the practice of BIPs and EIPs, the Burst community has established CIPs (short for “Capability Improvement Proposal” or even “Coin Improvement Proposal”) to advance further development of Burstcoin. So CIPs describe standards for the Burstcoin platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards.

The CIP process begins with a new idea for Burst. Each potential CIP must have an author — someone who writes the CIP using the style and format described below, shepherds the discussions in the appropriate forums, and attempts to build community consensus around the idea. The CIP author should first attempt to ascertain whether the idea is CIP-able.

Small enhancements or patches to a particular piece of software often don’t require standardization between multiple projects; these don’t need a CIP and should be injected into the relevant project-specific development workflow with a patch submission to the applicable issue tracker.

Additionally, many ideas have been brought forward for changing Burstcoin that have been rejected for various reasons. The first step should be to search past discussions to see if an idea has been considered before, and if so, what issues arose in its progression. After investigating past work, the best way to proceed is by posting about the new idea to the Burstcoin Discord or Burst Reddit. Once the author has asked the Burst-community as to whether an idea has any chance of acceptance, a draft CIP should be presented to the Burst Reddit. This gives the author a chance to flesh out the draft CIP to make it properly formatted, of high quality, and to address additional concerns about the proposal.

Following a discussion, the proposal should be submitted to the CIPs repository. Once the CIP has been approved for draft inclusion by an editor (who must ensure that the above steps have been taken), the CIP will be merged with draft status, and the editor will open a new pull request to activate the CIP. This pull request will serve as the comments / discussion thread for the CIP and must remain open for a minimum of 30 days.

Reasons for rejecting CIPs include duplication of effort, disregard for formatting rules, being too unfocused or too broad, being technically unsound, not providing proper motivation or addressing backwards compatibility, or not in keeping with the Burstcoin philosophy.

It is highly recommended that a single CIP contain a single key proposal or new idea. The more focused the CIP, the more successful it tends to be. If in doubt, split your CIP into several well-focused ones.

For a CIP to be accepted it must meet certain minimum criteria. It must be a clear and complete description of the proposed enhancement. The enhancement must represent a net improvement. The proposed implementation, if applicable, must be solid and must not complicate the protocol unduly.