Add EIP: Upgrade Mascots

[abcoathup]

Meta EIP to formalize mascots for network upgrades.

🦉 Shapella (Shanghai + Capella)
🐡 Dencun (Cancun + Deneb)
🦒 Pectra (Prague + Electra)
🦓 Fusaka (Fulu + Osaka)

[eth-bot]

✅ All reviewers have approved.

[poojaranjan]

@abcoathup
I appreciate the effort and thought that went into documenting this proposal. Having a mascot is a “nice to have” community initiative for fun and engagement, which is already well-managed through EthMag and ACD meetings. Even without it or if misunderstood, Ethereum, as a blockchain, will continue to operate uninterrupted. Introducing an online voting process, prediction markets, and mascot contests seems a bit excessive for this purpose.

Personally, I don’t think this needs to be added as a Meta EIP or even as an EIP to formalize the process. That said, if Editors feel strongly that it should move forward as an EIP, I would suggest classifying it as Informational rather than Meta.

[lightclient]

Yeah that's a good point. Informational would make more sense. There is also an issue where we don't really do living EIPs, but you would likely want this EIP to continue adding future mascots.

[poojaranjan]

living EIPs

I haven’t thought through the end status yet, but that’s certainly an important consideration for any proposal.

In my view, EIPs are meant to propose improvements to Ethereum’s protocol or its supporting processes. If we’re not focused on establishing a formal process for mascot selection, this seems more like a listing than a process definition.

The mascot’s name or image doesn’t directly influence protocol specifications. But, if there’s a strong community interest in sharing this information, it could be mentioned within an upgrade Meta EIP.

While I appreciate the intent and community enthusiasm behind it, it doesn’t appear to offer enough informational or procedural value to warrant being a Living EIP. From a process and value standpoint, I don’t see this proposal contributing meaningfully to the EIP standards.

Overall, it doesn’t seem closely aligned with the goals of the EIP documentation, but I may be missing something.

[nixorokish]

i think this serves as a good avenue for community involvement. informational sounds more appropriate to me, too, and it seems reasonable to source initial suggestions from client teams since they're most familiar with the technical features that would inform a "relevant" mascot. agree that onchain voting as a part of the process would be a little much - i think an EIP like this should be as lightweight as possible and then experiment with processes. would also remove the mention of merchandise

[github-actions]

The commit 46d1ddc (as a parent of 635288a) contains errors.
Please inspect the Run Summary for details.

[abcoathup]

The intent is to formalize the requirements for network upgrade mascots and a facilitator role to select a mascot.

Based on the feedback we have changed to Informational (from Meta).

The facilitator (Mascot Wrestler) can use any process to select as long as it is public. I removed the suggestions for different processes as these were examples of what could be used, rather than what must be used. The intent is to leave this open as it could be different for each upgrade.

already well-managed through EthMag and ACD meetings

@poojaranjan despite @nixorokish's "Official™️ emoji poll". Apparently some people think it should be a 🐯 rather than a 🦓 for Fusaka upgrade (though that could be a feature of rough consensus).
https://x.com/nixorokish/status/1952819749228093800

A mascot can be chosen by the community, giving them more involvement, awareness and ownership in the upgrade process.

I don’t think this needs to be added as a Meta EIP or even as an EIP to formalize the process.

The aim is for increased community awareness & engagement around upgrades, in the spirit of fun/playfulness that is at the core of Ethereum. An EIP is the best place to have a long term store for a specification of requirements, and has an established discussion process.

it could be mentioned within an upgrade Meta EIP.

This would be up to upgrade Meta EIP authors. I would be keen to see this, as an official record of the mascot but didn't want to add extra burden to the upgrade Meta EIP authors.

living EIPs

@lightclient I didn't intend for this to be a living EIP, the requirements for mascots shouldn't change and it is open ended how the facilitator role selects a mascot (as long as it is open/public).

i think an EIP like this should be as lightweight as possible

@nixorokish agree, I wanted to give examples of potential processes, but that muddied the waters, so have removed. Happy to make it even lighter.

remove the mention of merchandise

@nixorokish I've removed. Intent was to share the concept of people dressed as mascots at major Ethereum events (like the ZK frog costumes at Devcon SEA or Bufficorn at ETHDenver), or for Devcon/Devconnect t-shirts to include mascots.

[g11tech]

as such this proposal only proposes to formalize the mascot process, the actual mascots should go in hardfork meta EIPs rather than having a living EIP to collate them.

good enough for draft as of now, imo

[eth-bot]

All Reviewers Have Approved; Performing Automatic Merge...