How do new ideas come to Ethereum ecosystem?
Virtually every protocol and systematic change to the Ethereum ecosystem – from ERC-20 to NFTs and beyond – has emerged from the community.
Step 1: Forum discussion
The forum used by the Ethereum development community is called Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians.
With less than 5,000 active users, this is a website that enables forum-based discussions about ideas for the Ethereum ecosystem, enabling anyone to submit posts and post replies.
The About section of the website is no more than one sentence long, reading: A self-organized Fellowship within the Ethereum community to maximize technical opportunities, share ideas, and work together effectively across national, organizational and other boundaries.
This includes technical standards improvements to token standards and anything else that can benefit the overall Ethereum ecosystem.
Step 2: Good ideas float to the top: official proposals
Ideas and comments with a lot of traction on Fellowship of a Ethereum Magicians end up being converted into what’s known as an Ethereum improvement proposal, posted on a separate website.
These EIP’s end up being pushed to Github where actual development can finally begin.
It is with this process that the Ethereum ecosystem is able to change and improve over time.
This process is very much a community oriented and community developer-based process.
Noteworthy Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs)
EIP-2: Hard Fork
EIP-20: Defining the ERC-20 token standard
EIP-137: Ethereum Name Service (ENS)
EIP-721: Defined the NFT token standard (ERC-721)
EIP-2981: NFT Royalty Standard
EIP-3156: Flash Loans
EIP-4671: Non-Tradable Tokens Standard
EIP-4973: Account-bound Tokens
Further Reading:
Ethereum Request for Comments (ERCs) Process – https://etherworld.co/ethereum-request-for-comments-ercs-process/