There has been a recent discussion on the Lightning mailing list about the idea of organizing Lightning specifications and naming them Lightning Improvement Protocols LIPs. The idea comes from Bitcoin’s own Bitcoin Improvement Protocol where all the past, present and future work on Bitcoin is thoroughly explained.

Lightning currently has BOLTs, short for Basis Of Lightning Technology that explains everything about Lightning network but it seems there is some confusion around that and not a lot of people realize that this is where the improvements are supposed to go. This could be related to the fact that the repository hosting Lightning specs is named lightning-rfc event though they are referred to as BOLTs. LIPs or something equivalent, might actually be a good way to organize Lightning specs but the community could just agree to keep on using BOLTs instead, whatever the outcome it sure would be more helpful if the all crypto related specs could emulate the same structure as BIPs since it’s already a well established and recognized way to specify crypto related improvements and specs.