BIP2:Clarify mailing list expectations in BIP process

cal-gooo commented at 3:05 am on December 7, 2025: none

Summary

clarify that posting to the bitcoin-dev mailing list is a best-effort step
note the list’s moderation means ideas may not be posted or discussed

BIP2:Clarify mailing list expectations in BIP process 53b85b3d0f

jonatack commented at 3:33 pm on December 7, 2025: member

An idea (and later, after community discussion, a draft proposal) can be proposed to either the bitcoin-dev mail list or to Delving Bitcoin in order to see necessary prior discussion of concept, technical merit, or soundness before opening a PR here.

If neither forum accepts publication, it should be seen as feedback to improve the proposal, and not to prematurely propose it here.

NACK for these reasons.

jonatack commented at 3:38 pm on December 7, 2025: member

Note also, that we have seen a wave of BIPs being opened prematurely here as a shortcut, and dealing with them entails a cost that is akin to dealing with spam. If anything, the anti-spam filtering needs to improve, not be weakened.

in bip-0002.mediawiki:35 in 53b85b3d0f

31@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ The BIP process begins with a new idea for Bitcoin. Each potential BIP must have
32 Small enhancements or patches to a particular piece of software often don't require standardisation between multiple projects; these don't need a BIP and should be injected into the relevant project-specific development workflow with a patch submission to the applicable issue tracker.
33 Additionally, many ideas have been brought forward for changing Bitcoin that have been rejected for various reasons.
34 The first step should be to search past discussions to see if an idea has been considered before, and if so, what issues arose in its progression.
35-After investigating past work, the best way to proceed is by posting about the new idea to the [https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev Bitcoin development mailing list].
36+After investigating past work, the best way to proceed is by posting about the new idea to the [https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev Bitcoin development mailing list]. Because the list is highly moderated, there is no guarantee the idea will be posted or discussed; treat this as a best-effort step rather than a blocker for the next steps.

jonatack commented at 4:04 pm on December 7, 2025:

0After investigating past work, the best way to proceed is by posting about the new idea to the [https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev Bitcoin development mailing list]. The list is moderated; non-publication should be seen as feedback to improve the proposal, and not to prematurely open a PR in the BIPs repository.

cal-gooo commented at 5:49 pm on December 7, 2025:

If the idea is not getting published, then how could the author receive any feedback at all?

jonatack commented at 6:11 pm on December 7, 2025:

If the idea is not getting published, then how could the author receive any feedback at all?

if both the mail list and delving won’t publish the submission, it’s feedback that it is low quality (seen as noise or spam rather than signal); note also that moderation is expensive of terms of contributors’ time that one is asking for
review is in any case possible on the author’s GitHub repository, which can be mentioned on social media
review by experienced contributors isn’t a right and generally is earned by showing human proof of work over time (reviewing others’ work, making good contributions, etc.)

cal-gooo commented at 7:49 pm on December 8, 2025:

review is in any case possible on the author’s GitHub repository, which can be mentioned on social media

One clarification: if a proposal gains traction and thoughtful discussion on social media or other public venues, does that count in BIP editor’s view as a legitimate signal of interest or merit(If yes we should clearly mention it in the BIP)? Or is the mailing list still considered the only acceptable path for an idea to be recognized as worth discussing?

I’m asking because if the list blocks a substantive proposal, but the broader community engages with it elsewhere, it seems important to understand whether that external engagement is considered meaningful or simply disregarded.

The goal isn’t to burden moderators or force publication of junk. It’s to avoid a situation where moderation decisions—intentional or not—determine which technical proposals are allowed to enter public discussion. Ideas need some visible path to review that doesn’t depend on mailing list approval. The-Cat is a great example of this.

ostromcode commented at 10:33 pm on December 9, 2025:

I think there are real concerns with this assumption. You’re trusting that the ML moderators are not politically motivated. For example, there is currently a debate regarding spam on the network. Proposals making suggestions to deal with spam are being rejected without comment with seemingly no regard for the quality of the suggestion, while low effort messages that clearly are not technical at all like the one saying “op_return spam is irrelevant” were approved. You’re being too trusting. Clear rules are needed at the very least.

Full disclosure: I’m currently being censored from the ML with a proposal I’m working on and rejected from submitting a PR for not discussing it on the ML.

cal-gooo commented at 7:36 pm on December 8, 2025: none

An idea (and later, after community discussion, a draft proposal) can be proposed to either the bitcoin-dev mail list or to Delving Bitcoin in order to see necessary prior discussion of concept, technical merit, or soundness before opening a PR here.

To be honest I dont see anywhere in BIP 2 mentioned the Delving Bitcoin as another option, so we should amend it.

kanzure commented at 8:07 pm on December 8, 2025: contributor

Anyone can post an idea anywhere they want on the Internet. It doesn’t have to even be in the BIP repository or posted anywhere related to the BIPs.git repository. The value of the BIPs repository will live and die how on accurately it reflects the needs of the developers working on bitcoin and what they commonly reference. The mailing list cannot be a “required” part of the process ( what if the mailing list didn’t exist? it’s just a bad idea). I really don’t think of any of this as policy, as you cannot force anyone to do anything with any BIP (including any BIP editors), but rather it’s an exercise of writing down expectations.

murchandamus commented at 8:10 pm on December 8, 2025: contributor

I’m not convinced this PR is an improvement.

Both BIP 2 and BIP 3 emphatically recommend that people discuss their idea in public before spending time on a fully fleshed out proposal. Obviously, this is especially true for would-be authors that are new to protocol development.

The first step should be to discuss your idea among friends and collaborators to test and hone an idea. If it survives the local cracker-barrel discussion and comes out even better, it’s probably still a good idea to get more feedback from a broader circle on social media or some more experienced people. After that, a summary of your idea should be put to discussion on the mailing list.

If you skip testing your idea and jump right to writing a full proposal, while new at this, you are likely to overlook significant flaws in the approach and spend a lot of time on something that is unlikely to see much traction.

If your idea gets no support on the mailing list, or doesn’t even make the mailing list, I would suggest trying to make up the skipped steps, not to skip ahead to open a PR here.

luke-jr commented at 12:35 pm on December 9, 2025: member

Delving Bitcoin does not have any special role in the BIP process, and is not a good place to discuss BIPs (or anything)

Twitter might be an acceptable alternative, but currently BIP 2 is pretty strict on the bitcoindev ML specifically

kanzure commented at 10:37 pm on December 9, 2025: contributor

This is a false narrative because I remember seeing lots of spam related content on the mailing list. It can’t be true that all spam content has been censored.

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BIP2:Clarify mailing list expectations in BIP process #2049

Summary