Ethereum Development Standards

Standards overview

The Ethereum community has adopted many standards that help keep projects (such as Ethereum clients and wallets) interoperable across implementations, and ensure smart contracts and dapps remain composable.

Typically standards are introduced as Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), which are discussed by community members through a standard processopens in a new tab.

• Introduction to EIPs
• List of EIPsopens in a new tab
• EIP GitHub repoopens in a new tab
• EIP discussion boardopens in a new tab
• Introduction to Ethereum Governance
• Ethereum Governance Overviewopens in a new tab March 31, 2019 - Boris Mann
• Ethereum Protocol Development Governance and Network Upgrade Coordinationopens in a new tab March 23, 2020 - Hudson Jameson
• Playlist of all Ethereum Core Dev Meetingsopens in a new tab (YouTube Playlist)

Types of standards

There are 3 types of EIPs:

• Standards Track: describes any change that affects most or all Ethereum implementations
• Meta Trackopens in a new tab: describes a process surrounding Ethereum or proposes a change to a process
• Informational Trackopens in a new tab: describes an Ethereum design issue or provides general guidelines or information to the Ethereum community

Furthermore, the Standard Track is subdivided into 4 categories:

• Coreopens in a new tab: improvements requiring a consensus fork
• Networkingopens in a new tab: improvements around devp2p and Light Ethereum Subprotocol, as well as proposed improvements to network protocol specifications of whisper and swarm.
• Interfaceopens in a new tab: improvements around client API/RPC specifications and standards, and certain language-level standards like method names and contract ABIs.
• ERCopens in a new tab: application-level standards and conventions

More detailed information on these different types and categories can be found in EIP-1opens in a new tab

Token standards

• ERC-20 - A standard interface for fungible (interchangeable) tokens, like voting tokens, staking tokens or virtual currencies.
  • ERC-223 - A fungible tokens standard that makes tokens behave identical to ether and supports token transfers handling on the recipients side.
  • ERC-1363 - An extension interface for ERC-20 tokens that supports executing callback on recipient contracts in a single transaction.
• ERC-721 - A standard interface for non-fungible tokens, like a deed for artwork or a song.
  • ERC-2309opens in a new tab - A standardized event emitted when creating/transferring one, or many non-fungible tokens using consecutive token identifiers.
  • ERC-4400opens in a new tab - Interface extension for EIP-721 consumer role.
  • ERC-4907opens in a new tab - Add a time-limited role with restricted permissions to ERC-721 tokens.
• ERC-777 - (NOT RECOMMENDED) A token standard improving over ERC-20.
• ERC-1155 - A token standard which can contain both fungible and non-fungible assets.
• ERC-4626 - A tokenized vault standard designed to optimize and unify the technical parameters of yield-bearing vaults.

Learn more about token standards.

Further reading

• Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs)

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