Process: Activate BIP3

murchandamus commented at 3:32 am on April 12, 2025: contributor

This is a first draft of applying the changes prescribed by BIP 3 in the section Updates to Existing BIPs should this BIP be Activated.

It also updates the CI-scripts to align with the new formatting.

Resolved:

@real-or-random’s proposal to update the Licensing scheme
Enforce order of headers in Preamble and fix order in BIPs that don’t conform

Planned for follow-up or parallel PRs:

Evaluate Informational BIPs regarding update to Specification type
BIPs that have had Draft status for extended periods will be moved to Complete or Deployed as applicable in collaboration with their authors.
The authors of incomplete Draft BIPs will be contacted to learn whether the BIPs are still in progress toward Complete, and will otherwise be updated to Closed as described in the Workflow section above.
Make changes or remove non-existent BIPs 40, 41, and 63 (breaks CI)

murchandamus added the label Pending acceptance on Apr 12, 2025

murchandamus added the label Process on Apr 12, 2025

murchandamus force-pushed on Apr 12, 2025

in bip-0001.mediawiki:4 in 4c67644571 outdated

0@@ -1,13 +1,11 @@
1 <pre>
2   BIP: 1
3   Title: BIP Purpose and Guidelines
4-  Author: Amir Taaki <genjix@riseup.net>
5-  Comments-Summary: No comments yet.
6-  Comments-URI: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/wiki/Comments:BIP-0001
7-  Status: Replaced
8+  Authors: Amir Taaki <genjix@riseup.net>

jonatack commented at 1:00 pm on April 13, 2025:

Looks like scripts/buildtable.pl will need to be updated for the BIP3 headers changes.

jonatack commented at 1:04 pm on April 13, 2025:

e.g. update the required fields, Author -> Authors, remove the comments, update title length, update the licenses, update %MiscField, add checks for new fields like Deputies, etc.

murchandamus commented at 6:51 pm on April 14, 2025:

Thanks yes, I’m working on that today.

murchandamus commented at 9:04 pm on April 14, 2025:

@jonatack: This should be done

murchandamus force-pushed on Apr 14, 2025

murchandamus commented at 9:03 pm on April 14, 2025: contributor

I have updated the scripts/buildtable.pl in lock step with each of the changes so that the build script passes for every commit. The remaining tasks should probably be handled in follow-ups as they will take a variable amount of time.

murchandamus force-pushed on Jun 20, 2025

murchandamus commented at 10:46 pm on June 20, 2025: contributor

Rebased on the latest version of #1819.

murchandamus force-pushed on Jun 20, 2025

murchandamus force-pushed on Jun 21, 2025

murchandamus commented at 0:50 am on June 21, 2025: contributor

I can’t reproduce the scripts/diffcheck.sh error locally either with the latest commit of this branch, by bisecting, or after merging the latest upstream/master. I’m thinking that the next step is to improve the script with a more helpful error message, but I’m not going to pursue that today.

ajtowns commented at 5:42 am on July 1, 2025: contributor

You can reproduce the error message and get more info with:

0$ git checkout 187d8859dce80c8433ff7466d012b5dd78ac3136   # master's parent commit (to avoid the conflict)
1$ git merge 5e776c4c92d0a33c15311c7289139835132f2fec      # this PR
2$ scripts/diffcheck.sh
3...
4$ diff -u -B5 /tmp/before.diff /tmp/after.diff
5...

It’s complaining that there are differences in the summaries of BIPs 40 (“Stratum wire protocol”), 41 (“Stratum mining protocol”), and 63 (“Stealth addresses”); which are all changing from “Standard” to “Specification”, but only exist as assigned numbers, with no actual document in the repo. They’re all more than a decade old based on git blame’s output, so could probably just be removed from the README entirely (though doing that would also trigger the same set of errors).

ajtowns commented at 6:39 am on July 1, 2025: contributor

I wonder if it would be worthwhile splitting the list of BIPs in the README by status. I’ve had a go at that in a gist here, including an update for the perl script: https://gist.github.com/ajtowns/5a8c504b6ef0e91437614be2840921d7#file-test-mediawiki (also changed the link text to be BIP-nnn instead of just nnn, to make searching for “bip-3” easier)

murchandamus commented at 1:28 am on July 8, 2025: contributor

It’s complaining that there are differences in the summaries of BIPs 40 (“Stratum wire protocol”), 41 (“Stratum mining protocol”), and 63 (“Stealth addresses”);

Thanks for figuring that out. I was starting to doubt my sanity that evening. :)

They’re all more than a decade old based on git blame’s output, so could probably just be removed from the README entirely (though doing that would also trigger the same set of errors).

I guess I should remove or relabel them in a separate PR, then.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile splitting the list of BIPs in the README by status. I’ve had a go at that in a gist here, including an update for the perl script: https://gist.github.com/ajtowns/5a8c504b6ef0e91437614be2840921d7#file-test-mediawiki (also changed the link text to be BIP-nnn instead of just nnn, to make searching for “bip-3” easier)

I like the change to “BIP-nnn”; it looks nice. And sorting by status neatly highlights what’s deployed, but it not being sorted by numbers looks awfully strange to me—I have probably been staring at it too long that way. It might get some people motivated to update their BIPs to a more adequate status?

However, this Pr already has a lot going on, making me concerned that it will get review, I’m not sure I’d want to open up that can of worms in addition, especially being on the fence.

murchandamus force-pushed on Jul 8, 2025

murchandamus commented at 1:53 am on July 8, 2025: contributor

Thanks @ajtowns! It passes CI now. @real-or-random, what do you think is the best course of action? It would probably make sense to first get the licensing update you propose in?

ajtowns commented at 7:52 am on July 8, 2025: contributor

I wonder if it would be worthwhile splitting the list of BIPs in the README by status.

I like the change to “BIP-nnn”; it looks nice.

However, this Pr already has a lot going on,

I wasn’t meaning to imply it should be part of this PR; my understanding was further improvements could still be made once BIP-3 was active.

murchandamus commented at 2:39 pm on July 8, 2025: contributor

Ah sorry, I misunderstood that. Yeah, afterwards sounds good to me, as the reordering of the README table would conflict with all of the changes here.

murchandamus commented at 8:11 pm on July 8, 2025: contributor

Cherry-picked the commit from #1891 to add support for the Version field to scripts/buildtable.pl, thanks @nothingmuch.

real-or-random commented at 10:03 am on July 9, 2025: contributor

@real-or-random, what do you think is the best course of action? It would probably make sense to first get the licensing update you propose in?

See #1892.

murchandamus added the label PR Author action required on Jul 16, 2025

ajtowns commented at 4:26 am on August 27, 2025: contributor

Is this waiting on anything?

murchandamus commented at 9:55 pm on September 16, 2025: contributor

Is this waiting on anything?

Mostly me needing to redo the work here to rebase on top of the many changes. Also #1970.

process: Activate BIP3, close BIP2 edc21d1153

process: Update README to match BIP3 19757e0f50

process: Clarify handling of controversial BIPs

It is preferable to close PRs over having them stuck in controversy
limbo indefinitely.

3adba2fa3d

process: Proposed ↦ Complete

Amend CI script to new statuses and update existing status field values
in table and BIPs.

```
sed -z -i 's/Status: Proposed/Status: Complete/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Proposed/Status: Complete/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -i 's/| Proposed/| Complete/' README.mediawiki
```

4cb2d064e6

process: Final/Active ↦ Deployed

```
sed -z -i 's/Status: Active/Status: Deployed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Active/Status: Deployed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -z -i 's/Status: Final/Status: Deployed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Final/Status: Deployed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -i 's/| Active/| Deployed/' README.mediawiki
sed -i 's/| Final/| Deployed/' README.mediawiki
```

cc2bdb3c81

process: Deferred/Obsolete/Rejected/Replaced/Withdrawn ↦ Closed

```
sed -z -i 's/Status: Deferred/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Deferred/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -z -i 's/Status: Obsolete/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Obsolete/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -z -i 's/Status: Rejected/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Rejected/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -z -i 's/Status: Replaced/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Replaced/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
sed -z -i 's/Status: Withdrawn/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Status: Withdrawn/Status: Closed/' bip-0*.mediawiki
```

```
    sed -i 's/| Deferred/| Closed/' README.mediawiki
    sed -i 's/| Obsolete/| Closed/' README.mediawiki
    sed -i 's/| Rejected/| Closed/' README.mediawiki
    sed -i 's/| Replaced/| Closed/' README.mediawiki
    sed -i 's/| Withdrawn/| Closed/' README.mediawiki
```

3fa1613c68

process: Superseded-By ↦ Proposed-Replacement

sed -z -i 's/Superseded-By: /Proposed-Replacement: /' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Superseded-By: /Proposed-Replacement: /' bip-0*.mediawiki

5c6cf8789c

process: Standards Track ↦ Specification

```
sed -z -i 's/Type: Standards Track/Type: Specification/' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Type: Standards Track/Type: Specification/' bip-0*.mediawiki
```

Afetr the scripted changes, the changes to BIP-40, BIP-41, and BIP-63
were undone, because it breaks CI.

These three BIPs only exist conceptually and their proposal documents
are missing which causes changes to them ot break the CI. I defer the
changes to these BIPs to a separate pull request to get CI to pass.

1a0c9e65b5

murchandamus force-pushed on Oct 8, 2025

murchandamus removed the label PR Author action required on Oct 8, 2025

murchandamus marked this as ready for review on Oct 8, 2025

murchandamus commented at 10:13 pm on October 8, 2025: contributor

Some hours of resolving merge conflicts, redoing edits, and adding the “Created ↦ Assigned” header update, each commit is now passing the buildtable.pl. This should now be ready to deploy, whenever it has been reviewed and the community is ready.

achow101 commented at 10:24 pm on October 8, 2025: member

Concept ACK

murchandamus removed the label Pending acceptance on Oct 8, 2025

davidgumberg commented at 11:26 pm on October 8, 2025: none

Concept ACK, +1 to @ajtowns suggestion of having BIPs organized by status (somewhere, doesn’t necessarily have to replace the numbered list), but I agree with @murchandamus that this should happen in a later PR.

murchandamus commented at 1:19 am on October 9, 2025: contributor

having BIPs organized by status

I just took a look at that again, and noticed that the table in the README is already a "wikitable sortable", but a little more search tells me that GitHub only translates the MediaWiki format to Markdown under the hood, and sortable tables are actually not supported. It might simply not be something that we can natively support in the README, but perhaps the bips repo could also be published as a github.io page at some point or something similar. (Just an idea, not signing up to drive that. ;))

polespinasa commented at 0:17 am on October 10, 2025: member

+1 to @ajtowns and @davidgumberg.

perhaps the bips repo could also be published as a github.io page at some point or something similar.

This could be a nice way to do it, something similar to https://bips.dev/status/.

in README.mediawiki:23 in edc21d1153 outdated

19@@ -20,20 +20,20 @@ Those proposing changes should consider that ultimately consent may rest with th
20 | Amir Taaki
21 | Process
22 | Replaced
23-|- style="background-color: #cfffcf"
24+|- style="background-color: #ffcfcf"

polespinasa commented at 0:21 am on October 10, 2025:

Just curiosity, what do these color changes do? I don’t see any difference in the original file vs. this commit version.

murchandamus commented at 9:02 pm on October 10, 2025:

TBH, I think this is another feature that simply doesn’t render in GitHub. Presumably, it does something when you render the MediaWiki files locally.

in README.mediawiki:38 in 3fa1613c68 outdated

35 |
36 | BIP process, revised
37 | Luke Dashjr
38 | Process
39-| Replaced
40+| Closed

polespinasa commented at 0:46 am on October 10, 2025:

Shouldn’t all closed be background-color: #ffcfcf ? #cfffcf is used for deployed ones if I understood correctly.

(If so, there are multiple files with the wrong color)

murchandamus commented at 9:08 pm on October 10, 2025:

Is it possible that you are getting the grouping of the lines mixed up? Rows start on the lines with |- and the last line belonging to the row has the Status column:

in bip-0135.mediawiki:5 in ebd0e00f00 outdated

1@@ -2,9 +2,7 @@
2   BIP: 135
3   Title: Generalized version bits voting
4   Author: Sancho Panza <sanch0panza@protonmail.com>
5-  Comments-Summary: No comments yet.
6-  Comments-URI: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/wiki/Comments:BIP-0135
7-                https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bip9-generalized-version-bits-voting-bip-genvbvoting.1968/
8+	  https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bip9-generalized-version-bits-voting-bip-genvbvoting.1968/

polespinasa commented at 0:51 am on October 10, 2025:

why is this link left here under.

polespinasa commented at 0:57 am on October 10, 2025:

Oh I see it’s moved in the next commit ea78303c827c9be35f0bc60a47ac53d3af36b85c Can’t this two just be squashed?

murchandamus commented at 9:11 pm on October 10, 2025:

Given the large amount of changes, I would prefer to keep the commits clear in their purpose, but perhaps it would be better to move the fixes to preambles earlier in the sequence of commits, so that this whitespace amendment to make sure the line is indented correctly isn’t as confusing.

murchandamus commented at 9:26 pm on October 10, 2025:

I reordered the fix to the Preamble of BIP 135 and the Renaming of Post-History to Discussion to go before dropping the Comments-URI and Comments-Summary, so the sequence of changes should now make more sense.

polespinasa commented at 1:12 am on October 10, 2025: member

ACK c356d8e1b5ed90bc63e971fb1cb927bcaecec57b

lgtm, didn’t run scripts locally but checked the changes on github.

murchandamus commented at 9:11 pm on October 10, 2025: contributor

Thanks for the reviews

BIP135: Move discussion to correct header 9eaee0a615

process: Post-History ↦ Discussion

Also line up with additional items in the lines below.

```
sed -i -z 's/  Post-History: /  Discussion:   /' bip-0*.md
sed -i -z 's/  Post-History: /  Discussion:   /' bip-0*.mediawiki
```

faed340067

process: Remove Comments-URI and -Summary

```
sed -i '0,/Comments-Summary/{/Comments-Summary/d}' bip-0*md
sed -i '0,/Comments-Summary/{/Comments-Summary/d}' bip-0*mediawiki
sed -i '0,/Comments-URI/{/Comments-URI/d}' bip-0*md
sed -i '0,/Comments-URI/{/Comments-URI/d}' bip-0*mediawiki
```

Then reset the BIPs with non-empty comment wikis:

- bip-0037.mediawiki
- bip-0038.mediawiki
- bip-0039.mediawiki
- bip-0042.mediawiki
- bip-0044.mediawiki
- bip-0047.mediawiki
- bip-0049.mediawiki
- bip-0060.mediawiki
- bip-0061.mediawiki
- bip-0074.mediawiki
- bip-0075.mediawiki
- bip-0077.md
- bip-0084.mediawiki
- bip-0090.mediawiki
- bip-0118.mediawiki
- bip-0125.mediawiki
- bip-0150.mediawiki
- bip-0151.mediawiki
- bip-0152.mediawiki
- bip-0171.mediawiki
- bip-0172.mediawiki
- bip-0173.mediawiki
- bip-0174.mediawiki
- bip-0176.mediawiki
- bip-0178.mediawiki
- bip-0199.mediawiki
- bip-0322.mediawiki
- bip-0340.mediawiki
- bip-0341.mediawiki

18cbfc7812

process: Author ↦ Authors

```
sed -z -i 's/Author: /Authors: /' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Author: /Authors: /' bip-0*.mediawiki
```

Also align correctly in case of multiple authors.

84541cf4e9

process: Allow Deputies header 0f56de33fc

process: Increase title limit 6fc7a2a60d

process: Update license check e46dc52b1d

BIP372: Drop redundant Discussions-To Header

BIP2 states that the Discussions-To header should only be used if the
proposal was discussed somewhere else beside the Bitcoin Developer
Mailing List. Therefore, the only use of the Discussions-To header in
the repository is unnecessary and can be removed before the header is
abolished.

7620e24e8d

process: Drop unused Discussions-To Header 60a814a1b6

editor: Remove outdated comment from README table 2b27e3e348

Allow `Version` field in checks as per BIP 3 335e570e53

process: Created ↦ Assigned

```
sed -z -i 's/Created: /Assigned: /' bip-0*.md
sed -z -i 's/Created: /Assigned: /' bip-0*.mediawiki
```

dbf2a3f2df

murchandamus force-pushed on Oct 10, 2025

jonatack commented at 8:16 pm on October 21, 2025: member

ACK dbf2a3f2df7b07585710f5146d98072e38339819

Convert licenses to SPDX codes f9afaf97c7

murchandamus commented at 2:22 pm on October 22, 2025: contributor

ACK dbf2a3f

Sorry, I noticed today when looking through the blame that we were still missing the License update which has now been added.

bip134: Remove wrong License header

The Copyright section specifies additional conditions, so the License
header is not correct (or at least misleading). So let's just remove it.
This is pragmatic because the field was only added as part of the
activation of BIP 2 anyway, and there are other old BIPs with a License
header.

f0c7670716

bip2: Use correct SPDX license ids in the text

See https://spdx.org/licenses/

eb5892ef2a

process: Use "official" SPDX identifiers

See https://spdx.org/licenses/

b74629f56e

in bip-0002.mediawiki:8 in f9afaf97c7

 4@@ -5,8 +5,7 @@
 5   Status: Closed
 6   Type: Process
 7   Assigned: 2016-02-03
 8-  License: BSD-2-Clause
 9-           OPL
10+  License: BSD-2-Clause OR OPL

jonatack commented at 4:29 pm on October 22, 2025:

Not sure which license “OPL” corresponds to in https://spdx.org/licenses/

jonatack commented at 4:36 pm on October 22, 2025:

idem for “GNU-All-Permissive”

jonatack commented at 4:38 pm on October 22, 2025:

FWIW per https://spdx.dev/learn/handling-license-info/#how, though it pertains to the per-file header:

0  SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause OR OPL

real-or-random commented at 4:41 pm on October 22, 2025:

Was just in the middle of working on a commit that addresses OPL and GNU All Permissive. :D

real-or-random commented at 4:46 pm on October 22, 2025:

(FWIW per spdx.dev/learn/handling-license-info#how):

Yeah, we could do this. Concept ~0. This makes it easier for automated tools (but do we really care?) and it makes it unambiguously clear that this is an SPDX License Expression (but BIP3 also makes this clear). The drawback is that (I think) it looks a bit less nice because then the line stands a bit out among the other lines in the BIP header.

jonatack commented at 5:48 pm on October 22, 2025:

Yes, I don’t have a strong opinion.

murchandamus commented at 8:15 am on October 23, 2025:

I’m gonna pull in the change by @real-or-random to update the instances of OPL and GNU-All-Permissive, but I prefer leaving it in the preamble format.

ajtowns commented at 12:48 pm on October 23, 2025:

FWIW per https://spdx.dev/learn/handling-license-info/#how, though it pertains to the per-file header:

That’s appropriate for giving full context for something added to an existing (source/doc) file where there’s no particular reason to expect a license identifier in the first place. But here we have a definition of what the headers mean, so I think being briefer is fine. We’re just saying License: <spdx-license-identifier/expression> rather than having <spdx-short-form-identifier> as a header directly.

real-or-random approved

real-or-random commented at 3:35 pm on October 23, 2025: contributor

ACK b74629f56e9fa984dd0b53a4148afa575c8f9a04 let’s activate this

jonatack commented at 9:03 pm on October 23, 2025: member

ACK b74629f56e9fa984dd0b53a4148afa575c8f9a04

(nit, a few mentions of “GNU All-Permissive” that perhaps would be less confusing if changed to “FSF All Permissive” per https://spdx.org/licenses/FSFAP)

0bip-0104.mediawiki:75:This BIP is dual-licensed under the BSD 2-clause license and the GNU All-Permissive License.
1bip-0123.mediawiki:21:This BIP is dual-licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal and GNU All-Permissive licenses.
2bip-0135.mediawiki:408:GNU All-Permissive licenses.

process: Fix up license sections to match preamble

Co-authored-by: Jon Atack <jon@atack.com>

7749fa2fca

murchandamus commented at 11:47 am on October 24, 2025: contributor

Thanks, @jonatack, I amended those three spots to reference FSF All Permissive instead. I decided to not update the uses of GNU-All-Permissive in the BIP2 text, given that this PR would sunset it.

real-or-random commented at 5:33 pm on October 24, 2025: contributor

(nit, a few mentions of “GNU All-Permissive” that perhaps would be less confusing if changed to “FSF All Permissive” per spdx.org/licenses/FSFAP)

I kept them intentionally because i) “GNU All-Permissive” is how GNU calls this license (see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#GNUAllPermissive) and ii) I think we shouldn’t edit the contents of the copyright sections. It’s really a declaration from the authors.

But yeah, I also don’t oppose changing them.

jonatack commented at 5:49 pm on October 24, 2025: member

Yes, it’s the discrepancy with the “FSFAP” license headers in those BIPs that gave me pause.

Maybe write “GNU All-Permissive License (editor note: equivalent to FSF All-Permissive License)” – if that is correct.

real-or-random commented at 8:14 am on October 25, 2025: contributor

Yes, it’s the discrepancy with the “FSFAP” license headers in those BIPs that gave me pause.

I guess anyone who really wants to know will figure out that FSFAP is the SPDX identifier for what GNU calls the GNU All-Permissive license. Sure, it’s not elegant but it’s how it is.

Maybe write “GNU All-Permissive License (editor note: equivalent to FSF All-Permissive License)” – if that is correct.

I don’t think that’s better. They’re not just equivalent; these are just two names for the same paragraph of text. That’s why the change doesn’t affect the meaning, and no one can reasonably complain about it.

I just tend to think it’s not the editors’ job to edit the Copyright section. For example, it’s a bad idea from a legal point of view to change copyright notices, and it’s a similarly bad idea to change license notices. (Almost all licenses out there, even the most permissive ones, require you to keep the license notice when distributing the work.)

jonasnick commented at 9:47 am on October 27, 2025: contributor

I’m in favor of activating BIP 3. Concept ACK.

in bip-0341.mediawiki:14 in faed340067 outdated

10@@ -11,8 +11,8 @@
11   Type: Specification
12   Created: 2020-01-19
13   License: BSD-3-Clause
14-  Post-History: 2019-05-06: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-May/016914.html [bitcoin-dev] Taproot proposal
15-                2019-10-09: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-October/017378.html [bitcoin-dev] Taproot updates
16+  Discussion: 2019-05-06: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-May/016914.html [bitcoin-dev] Taproot proposal

glozow commented at 6:33 pm on October 27, 2025:

I notice BIP 3 Format and Structure says

0* Discussion: <Noteworthy discussion threads in "yyyy-mm-dd: URL" format>

But previous formatting includes a title as well.

glozow commented at 6:51 pm on October 27, 2025: member

ACK 7749fa2fca4718c017d4f13fa07ed2726b83ff0f

Concept ACK to activating. I think the author has done a good job addressing concerns and gave ample time for people to chime in. I had a look around the google groups discussions, this PR, #1794, #1712 and think this is widely supported.

I had a cursory look at the commits updating statuses and types, and they look correct to me. CI is updated and green, and other minor updates can be in followups.

polespinasa commented at 9:44 pm on October 27, 2025: member

ACK 7749fa2fca4718c017d4f13fa07ed2726b83ff0f

Just did a fast check on the new commits updating the license; changes make much sense to me, although I don’t have a strong opinion on the format discussion. I agree with @real-or-random about not modifying copyright sections (although I don’t believe in intellectual property 🙃).

ACK on activating :fire:

Process: Activate BIP3 #1820