In a blog post on the Chia Network official blog, Chia has laid out the CHia Improvement Proposal process, similar in principle to the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP). This is going to be a mechanism for all of us folks, not part of Chia Network but part of the Chia network to help steer the direction of the ecosystem.
The blog post is relatively extensive, and if you think you want to propose a Chia improvement you should make sure to read it carefully, as well as the documentation on github. But the basics are lifted here below.
- CHIPs are reserved for broad ideas that require standardization between multiple projects. Most ideas to improve Chia should not be CHIPs. For more info, see the “What is a CHIP?” section of CHIP0001.
- A CHIP can only be finalized when there is broad acceptance from the community. Jokes and proposals that require hard forks are not likely to go anywhere.
- A CHIP is a formal process. You’ll need to put in a lot of hard work to see your idea through to the finish line.
- The bigger your proposal, the more difficult it will be to gain acceptance.
This is all well and good, and I suspect they are going to get flooded with some low effort ones to begin with and then start seeing some well set out CHIPs. But the real key is found in the closing paragraph of the blog post, “Everyone is free to choose which software to run on their own computers, and ultimately, it is up to all of us to decide what Chia itself is. We feel that CHIPs are a way to guide our nascent blockchain to its best possible future.”
While this is technically true, people run the version of Chia that Chia Network tells them to in practice. Ultimately it will be up to Chia Network what changes are made to the Chia network, as it has always been. Let me know what major improvements you would see to Chia? Should we burn fees a la Ethereum? I am very curious to see what kind of proposals are created, and which ones Chia Network considers. Feel free to cc me on any @ [email protected] or reach out when developing them.