Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)

Ethereum Improvement Proposals EIP, Means describes standards for the Ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards.

Proposals are expected to include a rationale for why the feature should be implemented and a technical specification outlining how implementation will occur.
EIPs come in a variety of types including:

Standard Track – Changes affecting a majority of Ethereum implementations

• Core – Improvements requiring a consensus fork
• Networking – Improvements to network protocol specifications
• Interface – Improvements to client specifications and standards
• ERC – Application-level standards and conventions

Meta – Process change requests

Informational – Guidelines for developing in Ethereum

Once a proposal is submitted a process kicks off giving the community the opportunity to decide whether it makes sense to include it in Ethereum’s future development. The stages of this process are:

Draft – An open EIP subject to change
Last Call – An open EIP that is ready for review
Final (non-Core) – In the last call for at least two weeks with requested technical changes completed
Final (Core) – Core Devs approve and intend to implement in the future hard fork
Deferred – Will not be immediately adopted, but open for future reconsideration.

Accepted proposals become standards ensuring any applications, smart contracts, etc. built using them are accessible when interfacing with Ethereum.