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A Decred Change Proposal, or DCP for short, is a design document that describespotential consensus changes to Decred. Due to Decred's decentralized governancestructure, any proposed changes to consensus require super-majority stakeholderapproval via the integrated on-chain proof-of-stake voting infrastructure.Consequently, DCPs primarily serve for documentation, fosteringcross-implementation compatibility, and helping ensure proper engineering rigoris followed.

Prior to putting a consensus change to an on-chain vote, the proposed changemust first be accompanied by a DCP as described inDCP-0000along with providing a working and tested implementation, and the rule changemust be gated behind a voting agenda which ensures the stakeholders areprovided with the opportunity to vote to accept or reject the change.

It is important to note that DCPs are the end result of a process that beginswith the Decred off-chain proposal and voting system,Politeia, which deals with more generalizedproposal submissions. It is through that system that all initial proposals forconsensus changes are brought to life, undergo collaboration, and are subject toan initial community vote to determine if the work necessary to create a workingimplementation, its associated DCP, and an on-chain vote for the rule changeshould be performed.