Following months of internal alignment and collaboration across the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the broader ecosystem, the Protocol cluster has officially published its core priorities, long-term commitments through 2029, and the precise scoping requirements for upcoming hard forks. As the Glamsterdam upgrade nears its mainnet deployment, the Ethereum development community has formally entered the Hegotá scoping season, setting the stage for a critical multi-year campaign to secure the blockchain against future cryptographic threats.
The comprehensive roadmap is the result of an intensive months-long coordination process involving roughly 60 researchers and engineers. Utilizing 62 proposed Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), multiple Glamsterdam retrospectives, specialized contribution templates, and numerous cluster-wide working sessions, the team has established a shared set of priorities designed to guide Ethereum’s technical evolution on a critical path.
I. The North Star: Preparing for Q-Day by 2029
At the heart of the Protocol cluster’s new mandate is a definitive "north star" objective: aiming for Ethereum Layer 1 to be fully quantum-resistant across all three core layers—execution, consensus, and data—by December 2029. This aggressive timeline aligns with independently published post-quantum migration targets set by major technology sector leaders, including Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft.
While estimates for "Q-day"—the hypothetical future date when quantum computers might break modern cryptographic systems—remain uncertain and sit outside human control, the Ethereum protocol developers have chosen to establish a self-imposed, non-negotiable deadline rather than waiting for absolute certainty. Planning for Q-day as early as 2030 is a deliberately aggressive assumption. Although most credible projections place the arrival of practical quantum computers much later, or potentially not at all, the EF Protocol cluster views early post-quantum readiness as a strategically responsible measure. It serves as a clear signal of Ethereum’s long-term viability across decades and centuries.
This strict deadline will be treated as non-negotiable at least until January 2027, at which point global quantum progress will be formally reassessed with input from external cryptographic experts.
II. The Plan: Managing Cadences and Milestones to 2029
Client software development teams are expected to begin implementing Hegotá upgrades in late Q4 2026. Under the July Strawmap framework, achieving full post-quantum readiness is slated for L, which sits five hard forks after Glamsterdam. Shipping Glamsterdam in December 2026 and reaching L by December 2029 requires an exceptionally rapid average cadence of just 7.2 months per fork, leaving little room for operational error or delays.
To mitigate scheduling risks, an August Strawmap update introduced a Minimum Viable Post-Quantum (MV-PQ) Layer 1 milestone at J. This contingency framework includes a post-quantum public-key registry at I, followed by a post-quantum consensus-layer heartbeat, lean data availability (DA) sampling on the data layer, and lean SPHINCS transactions on the execution layer at J*. A 12-month cadence from Glamsterdam can successfully achieve this crucial intermediate milestone by December 2029.
The MV-PQ framework is designed as a temporary safeguard to keep Ethereum operational through Q-day under reduced security guarantees while researchers continue refining complete post-quantum attestations. Furthermore, post-fork sequencing after J remains flexible. The Strawmap may swap K and L* milestones to bring lean consensus forward while pushing mandatory execution proofs back by a single fork. Delivering these upgrades successfully will require unprecedented parallel teamwork, tighter internal communication, and extensive collaboration with client teams, grant recipients, academic institutions, and the broader global community.
III. The Five Multi-Fork Research Arcs
To balance immediate deployment milestones with long-horizon engineering challenges, the Protocol cluster organizes its ongoing research around five multi-fork arcs: Fast Finality, Post-Quantum, Privacy, State, and zkEVM.
The Fast Finality arc aims to reduce Ethereum’s finality time from minutes down to a matter of seconds. Current technical designs decouple block production from finality, rebuilding the consensus layer around an available chain and a dedicated finality gadget. Specifications and active prototypes are already underway, with decoupled consensus targeted as a primary candidate for the I* upgrade.
The Post-Quantum arc spans all three protocol layers to fulfill the December 2029 security commitment. Cryptographic agility is vital on the execution layer, where native account abstraction allows signature schemes to be swapped without requiring a dedicated hard fork for each individual scheme. Conversely, the consensus layer cannot utilize cryptographic agility; its underlying cryptography and aggregation schemes can only be altered via hard forks. Consequently, consensus cryptography undergoes rigorous hardening before rollout, with consensus components waiting for a comprehensive post-quantum design rather than deploying piecemeal.
The Privacy arc focuses on embedding privacy directly into protocol guarantees, allowing users to hold balances, transact, and interact with smart contracts without exposing financial histories or relying on trusted third parties. Initial work is scheduled to begin during the Hegotá cycle to deliver native, trustless, and censorship-resistant private transactions on Layer 1. Long-term goals include scalable post-quantum privacy and encrypted mempools that conceal transaction contents until inclusion.
The State arc prevents state growth and data access from becoming binding system constraints. Key initiatives include migrating to an advanced trie structure, ensuring sustainable state growth, and enabling decentralized access to both current and historical network state. Major architectural and migration work is anticipated to begin during the I* fork and continue indefinitely.
Finally, the zkEVM arc transitions execution proofs from optional features to mandatory protocol rules, eventually allowing validators to verify succinct zero-knowledge proofs and cease re-executing every block locally. While current Strawmap scheduling places mandatory proofs in K*, ongoing reviews are evaluating a potential swap with post-quantum attestations to optimize the timeline. Regardless of the exact sequence, the push toward a native Layer 1 zkEVM drives essential formal verification tooling and verified cryptographic components that benefit all other development arcs.
IV. Prioritization Framework and the Maturity Pipeline
The core operational imperative of the Protocol cluster remains focused on concentrating resources exclusively on tasks that only the Protocol layer can execute, while fulfilling the core mandate items outlined in Ethereum’s foundational documentation. With Glamsterdam nearing completion and the December 2029 commitment established, post-quantum initiatives have shifted from long-term theoretical research into near-term engineering execution.
To govern how proposals earn inclusion on the mainnet roadmap, the cluster relies on a rigorous maturity pipeline: moving progressively from pure research to EIP specification, functional prototypes, devnets, and formal consideration tiers including PFI, CFI, and SFI before reaching mainnet deployment. Each sequential step is designed to accumulate empirical evidence, reduce technical uncertainty, and clarify engineering ownership. Devnet testing can—and frequently does—send experimental proposals back to the research phase, ensuring that high-level signaling indicators from core developers never substitute for concrete implementation data.
V. Hegotá as the First Testing Ground for Near-Term Commitments
As the immediate focus turns toward Hegotá, the Protocol cluster emphasizes that the upcoming fork is not the final post-quantum upgrade itself, but rather the critical test of whether the subsequent post-quantum forks can be delivered on schedule.
The primary consensus-layer headliner for Hegotá is EIP-7805 (Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists, or FOCIL), accompanied by EIP-8369 for eligibility profiling. Together, these proposals aim to prevent transaction censorship by empowering multiple validators to impose inclusion constraints on block builders. On the execution layer, EIP-8141 introduces the Frame Transaction model, fundamentally transforming transaction validation, execution, and gas payment at the protocol level. This framework provides native migration paths away from vulnerable secp256k1 keys, supports signature aggregation, and accommodates future signature schemes without necessitating individual hard forks.
To support these core advancements while preserving censorship resistance, privacy, and security—collectively known as CROPS—Hegotá incorporates targeted additions. EIP-8250 introduces keyed nonces to enhance user anonymity in privacy applications, while EIP-8272 provides access to recent onchain state compatible with FOCIL inclusion guarantees. Additional security-focused proposals, such as EIP-8365 for BLS withdrawal credential retirement and EIP-7906 for state diff assertions, further harden account structures and protect users against emerging attack vectors.
Delivering FOCIL and Frame Transactions safely while rigorously testing their mutual interactions represents the primary engineering challenge of the Hegotá upgrade cycle. Every additional proposal competing for inclusion must demonstrate absolute necessity to avoid straining the development and testing capacity of client teams.
VI. Community Engagement and Next Steps
Comprehensive tier lists and detailed evaluations for every candidate EIP considered for Hegotá have been published in a companion post by the EF Protocol cluster to ensure maximum transparency regarding the scoping process.
To address community inquiries, the Protocol team is hosting a public Reddit AMA on the r/ethereum community page, providing a direct forum to discuss the newly announced priorities, the Hegotá tier list, and the broader technical trajectory of the network.
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