Electrochemical CO

2

reduction reaction (CO

2

RR) has attracted growing attention in energy storage and sustainable production of fuels and chemicals. N-doped carbon materials are preferred metal-free electrocatalysts

but it remains one challenge to finely engineer the active sites and porosity. Herein

we demonstrated that ionic porous polyamides were a kind of versatile precursors to prepare functional carbon materials in a one-step pyrolysis process. The polyamide precursors allowed the maintenance of abundant N species at high temperatures. The existence of ionic moieties and large specific surface area of the precursors promoted the formation of larger porosity carbon with a large specific surface area and sufficient active graphitic-N species by controlling the pyrolysis temperature. The catalyst was highly selective in the CO

2

RR to produce CO with a maximum Faraday efficiency above 99%

attributable to the improved mass transfer in a large porosity system. This work shows that ionic polyamides are promising carbon precursors for the fabrication of metal-free electrocatalysts for CO

2

RR.