The Chain Agnostic Improvement Proposals define identifiers and conventions that work across blockchains rather than within one — a chain ID format, an account address format, an asset identifier. They are the naming layer that makes multi-chain tooling possible without a per-chain special case.
CAIP
CAIP answers a question that only becomes urgent once there is more than one chain: how do you name a network, an account or an asset unambiguously, in a string a machine can parse? CAIP-2 names chains, CAIP-10 names accounts, CAIP-19 names assets.
- Chain IDs - A namespace and reference, so
eip155:1is unambiguous where ‘1’ is not. - Account identifiers - An address qualified by the chain it exists on.
- Asset identifiers - A token named in a way that survives moving between tools.
- Adopted by the wallet layer - Wallet connection and multi-chain SDKs lean on these identifiers heavily.
CAIP is the piece of this market’s standards stack closest to ordinary API practice — it is, in effect, a URI scheme. It also highlights the gap The State of Blockchain & Crypto APIs measures: the identifiers are standardised and the interfaces that use them are not, so an agent can name an asset precisely and still cannot discover what a given provider’s credential is allowed to do with it.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This standard shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this standard in the context of a real sector.
The State of Blockchain & Crypto APIs
The cross-chain naming layer — standardised identifiers under service interfaces that are still hand-rolled, in a market publishing scopes at 10.2% of its leaders.
