Two major blockchain technologies, namely bitcoin and Ethereum, have a formal mechanism of proposing improvements in the existing protocols. These are called improvement proposals, BIPs and EIPs. Both of these mechanisms have allowed participation from developers and technology enthusiasts around the world and have helped bitcoin and Ethereum evolve into a more mature and secure technology over time. In the sections below, notable improvement proposals for both blockchains are discussed.
In this section, some of the latest BIPs will be discussed.
This proposal is an improvement suggestion to introduce compact blocks in the bitcoin network in order to save bandwidth. In its current state, bitcoin protocol is not bandwidth-efficient and this proposal is aiming to address that issue by allowing relaying of compact blocks between nodes. Several changes, such as new data structures and messages, are required in order to implement this proposal. Currently, this...