BIPs
Bitcoin Improvement Proposals: how changes get written down, argued over, and adopted.
In plain words
A BIP — Bitcoin Improvement Proposal — is a numbered public document proposing a change or a standard: new rules, or conventions like the 12-word seed format (BIP 39). Anyone may write one. No one must obey one. A BIP earns its place only when developers build it and users choose it. The famous ones took years of argument to go live.
Why it matters
- Bitcoin's standards process: public, slow, adversarial — on purpose.
- Numbers you will meet everywhere: BIP 39 seeds, BIP 32 keys.
- Writing one earns influence, never power. Adoption is the only vote.
Not to be confused with
- A software update — a BIP is a proposal document; code and adoption come separately.
Go deeper
- The BIP repository — every proposal, public.
- Soft fork
- Seed phrase
Updated 2026-07-29