RPIP stands for Rocket Pool Improvement Proposal. An RPIP is a design document used to describe a change, standard, process, or informational topic for the Rocket Pool protocol and community. In practice, RPIPs are the main written record for many protocol and governance changes, and they provide the clearest durable reference for what a proposal is trying to do.
What RPIPs are for
RPIP-1 describes RPIPs as the primary mechanism for proposing new features, collecting community technical input, and documenting Rocket Pool design decisions. That makes them more than discussion posts: they are meant to be durable proposal documents with a historical record.
For users of this site, that is why RPIPs usually deserve the highest authority when a question is specifically about what a proposal says. Forum discussion can explain sentiment and objections, but the RPIP text is usually the clearest statement of the proposal itself.
The main RPIP types
Rocket Pool's RPIP system separates proposals into a few broad types. The exact categories matter because not every RPIP is changing the protocol in the same way.
- Protocol RPIPs describe changes that affect the core Rocket Pool protocol as defined through smart contracts.
- Meta RPIPs describe processes around Rocket Pool, such as governance procedures and decision-making changes.
- Informational RPIPs describe design issues, guidance, or background information without proposing a new feature.
Statuses and adoption
The RPIP system also tracks status. RPIP-1 and the RPIP site explain statuses such as Draft, Review, Final, Stagnant, Withdrawn, Living, and Obsolete.
That status matters when reading governance history. A Draft RPIP can be important to understanding current debate, but it does not carry the same weight as a Final or Living RPIP when you want the closest thing to an officially adopted written standard.
- Final RPIPs are meant to represent completed standards that should only receive limited follow-up edits.
- Living RPIPs are designed to keep evolving over time, with RPIP-1 itself as the most obvious example.
- Draft and Review RPIPs are still part of the active proposal pipeline and should be read as in-progress rather than settled.
Why they matter in this app
This app pulls from RPIPs, Snapshot, and forum material together. RPIPs usually answer the question, "What does the proposal specify?" Snapshot usually answers, "What happened in a vote?" Forum sources usually answer, "What did people argue about?"
That means RPIPs are the backbone of many answer pages here. They give the authoritative proposal text, while the rest of the governance sources add implementation context, timing, and disagreement.