In May, the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster welcomed a trio of new cluster coordinators, signaling a new phase of strategic planning and execution. Following months of internal alignment and ecosystem-wide consultations, the Protocol cluster has now publicly articulated its core priorities, a comprehensive set of commitments governing its work through December 2029, and the specific requirements for upcoming protocol upgrades, particularly the Hegotá hard fork. This announcement marks a significant step in Ethereum’s journey towards long-term security and resilience, especially in the face of emerging quantum computing threats.
The Ethereum Protocol cluster is setting its sights on a formidable goal: achieving quantum resistance across all three fundamental layers of the Ethereum network – execution, consensus, and data – by December 2029. This ambitious timeline deliberately aligns with independent migration targets set by major technology giants such as Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft, underscoring a shared industry recognition of the imminent need for quantum-safe cryptography. While the precise timing of "Q-day," the hypothetical moment when quantum computers could break current cryptographic standards, remains uncertain, the Ethereum Protocol cluster is adopting a proactive stance. With credible estimates placing Q-day as early as 2030, the cluster has established a self-imposed, aggressive deadline to ensure Ethereum’s continued security and viability for decades to come. This proactive approach is framed as a strategic imperative, a clear signal of Ethereum’s long-term commitment to its ecosystem and its users.
The Protocol cluster has committed to treating this self-imposed deadline as non-negotiable until January 2027, at which point progress will be reassessed with the input of external quantum computing experts. This phased approach allows for adaptability while maintaining a strong directional focus.
The Path Forward: A Multi-Fork Strategy
The roadmap towards this quantum-resistant future is structured around a series of coordinated protocol upgrades, known as hard forks. The upcoming Hegotá fork, currently undergoing scoping, is pivotal. This process has involved the proposal of 62 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), extensive retrospectives on the preceding Glamsterdam fork, the development of 16 contribution templates, and numerous cluster-wide working sessions. This rigorous process has engaged approximately 60 researchers and engineers in defining a shared set of priorities that will guide the network’s evolution.
The overarching strategy emphasizes a dual cadence to achieve the December 2029 target. The initial aggressive schedule, aiming for full post-quantum readiness at the "L" milestone, requires an average of 7.2 months per fork, starting from Glamsterdam’s anticipated December 2026 mainnet launch. This pace, while demanding, leaves minimal room for error. Recognizing potential challenges, an updated "Strawmap" introduces a minimum viable post-quantum (MV-PQ) milestone at "J." This contingency plan, achievable with a more relaxed 12-month cadence from Glamsterdam, aims to ensure Ethereum can maintain operations through a potential Q-day with reduced, but still functional, guarantees. Full resistance across all layers remains the ultimate objective for December 2029.
The plan allows for flexibility in the fork order beyond J, with potential swaps between K and L* to optimize the delivery of specific functionalities. This adaptability is crucial given the inherent uncertainties in research and development timelines.
A Collaborative Ecosystem Effort
Achieving these ambitious milestones necessitates an unprecedented level of collaboration not only within the Protocol cluster but also across the entire Ethereum ecosystem. The required cadence for these upgrades means that multiple forks will overlap, with Hegotá development running concurrently with the maturation of I specifications and the research for J through L*. Linear sequencing of these forks is insufficient to meet the deadline. Success hinges on enhanced internal communication within the cluster and proactive engagement with client teams, grant recipients, academic institutions, and the broader community to accelerate the research-to-mainnet pipeline.
This endeavor will require a significant expansion of human resources, encompassing cryptographers, client developers, researchers, security reviewers, and testing personnel, both within and beyond the Ethereum Foundation. The transition to post-quantum cryptography is envisioned as a truly ecosystem-wide undertaking.
Five Pillars of Research and Development
To manage this complex development landscape, the Protocol cluster has organized its work around five interconnected multi-fork research arcs: fast finality, post-quantum cryptography, privacy, state management, and zkEVM technology.
Fast Finality
The pursuit of fast finality aims to drastically reduce Ethereum’s transaction confirmation times from minutes to seconds. The current design direction proposes decoupling finality from block production and restructuring the consensus layer around an "available chain" and a "finality gadget." Specifications and prototypes for this critical upgrade are already in progress, with the goal of integrating them into the I* fork, where decoupled consensus is expected to be a prominent feature.
Post-Quantum Cryptography
The post-quantum arc is the cornerstone of the December 2029 commitment, spanning the consensus, data, and execution layers. Cryptographic agility is paramount for the execution layer, enabling the seamless swapping of signature schemes without requiring hard forks, largely facilitated by native account abstraction features like those provided by "Frames." The consensus layer, however, operates under different constraints, as cryptographic and aggregation scheme changes necessitate hard forks. Consequently, consensus cryptography will undergo extensive testing and hardening before deployment, with components waiting for the complete post-quantum design.
Privacy
The privacy arc is dedicated to establishing privacy as a fundamental protocol guarantee, allowing users to conduct transactions, manage balances, and interact with decentralized applications without revealing sensitive financial history or relying on trusted third parties. This initiative aims to deliver native, trustless, and censorship-resistant private transactions on Ethereum’s Layer 1 (L1). Future work will focus on scaling post-quantum privacy solutions and implementing encrypted mempools to obscure transaction details until they are confirmed on-chain.
State Management
The state arc addresses the critical challenge of state growth and access, ensuring that these factors do not become bottlenecks for the Ethereum network. Key initiatives include migrating to a new trie structure, promoting sustainable state growth, and decentralizing access to both current and historical state data. The most significant design and migration efforts are slated to commence with the I* fork and will extend beyond it.
zkEVM
The zkEVM arc is focused on evolving execution proofs from an optional and available feature to a mandatory component of the network. This transition will enable validators to verify succinct proofs instead of re-executing every block, significantly enhancing scalability and efficiency. The current Strawmap order places mandatory proofs in the K* fork. An ongoing review considers reordering this with the post-quantum attestation milestone, potentially advancing the consensus layer’s post-quantum readiness. Regardless of the exact sequencing, the development of an L1 zkEVM will drive advancements in formal verification tooling, workflows, and verified cryptographic components that will benefit other research arcs, particularly the post-quantum initiatives.
Strategic Prioritization and Execution Framework
The Protocol cluster’s operational imperative, reiterated from a July update, is to "Concentrate Protocol on what only Protocol can do and will do, and complete the Strawmap items that allow Ethereum to uphold the Mandate." The successful completion of the Glamsterdam fork and the new December 2029 commitment have shifted post-quantum work from a long-term research concern to an immediate delivery priority. This shift is reflected in an updated priority ladder, which also designates formal verification across the remaining research arcs as a cross-cutting tooling initiative.
The updated priority ladder outlines a clear hierarchy:
- P0: Maintaining the safety of the mainnet remains the highest priority, unchanged.
- P1: For the post-Glamsterdam phase, the focus shifts to shipping critical components of Hegotá, I, and J, specifically those on the critical path to Minimum Viable Post-Quantum (MV-PQ) readiness.
- P2: Research and engineering capacity will be allocated for K and L, with a primary focus on accelerating the remaining post-quantum objectives.
- P3: Research capability will be maintained for the four remaining multi-year arcs: fast finality, privacy, state management, and zkEVM. Formal verification will serve as a crucial cross-cutting tool to advance all these areas.
Work earns inclusion in these forks through a rigorous maturity pipeline: Research → EIP → Prototype → Devnet → Pre-Fork-Integration (PFI) → Core-Fork-Integration (CFI) → Stabilized-Fork-Integration (SFI) → Mainnet. Each stage is designed to incrementally build evidence, reduce uncertainty, and establish clear ownership before the next commitment is made. Devnets can trigger a return to the research phase, while PFI, CFI, and SFI represent increasing confidence levels from the AllCoreDevs community, but do not replace the need for robust implementation evidence.
Hegotá: The Crucial First Test
The upcoming Hegotá fork is presented not as the final post-quantum solution, but as a critical determinant of whether the subsequent post-quantum forks can be delivered on time. The "headliners" for Hegotá, already SFI’d (Stabilized Fork-Integration), are EIP-7805, "Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL)," for the consensus layer, and EIP-8141, "Frame Transaction," for the execution layer. The safe and simultaneous shipping of these two proposals, along with thorough testing of their interaction, constitutes the primary engineering effort for this fork.
There is a deliberately limited appetite for additional scope on the consensus layer for Hegotá. FOCIL is its central contribution, and any further additions must directly support post-quantum readiness. Each new consensus-layer item would divert precious research and developer resources away from the specification and prototyping of decoupled consensus, and the preparations for I and J post-Hegotá.
Commitments to CROPS: Censorship Resistance, Privacy, and Security
The Protocol cluster’s work is guided by the Ethereum Foundation’s Mandate, which emphasizes CROPS: Censorship Resistance (CR), Open Source and Free, Privacy (P), and Security (S). While open-source development and participation are foundational to all forks, Hegotá makes specific advancements across CR, P, and S.
Censorship Resistance (CR)
FOCIL aims to bolster Ethereum’s transaction inclusion guarantees by empowering multiple validators to impose constraints on block builders. Through Inclusion Lists (ILs), validators will specify transactions that must be included for a block to be deemed valid by attesters. EIP-8369, "VOPS Profiles for FOCIL Eligibility," defines the criteria for transaction eligibility and validator verification, ensuring that FOCIL’s resistance guarantees can extend to future transaction types. Together, FOCIL and EIP-8369 represent Hegotá’s direct commitment to resisting censorship and capture.
Privacy (P)
Ethereum currently lacks essential protocol-level support for privacy applications. EIP-8250, "Keyed Nonces," addresses this by allowing multiple users to share a single sender address for enhanced anonymity, while maintaining distinct nonces for their transactions, preventing them from blocking each other. EIP-8272, "Recent Roots," enables private transactions to leverage recent on-chain state in a FOCIL-checkable format, thus benefiting from its inclusion guarantees. These two proposals, set to ship alongside Frames, aim to remove significant barriers to trustless, censorship-resistant private activity on L1.
Security (S)
The "Frame Transaction" proposal introduces programmability to transaction validation, execution, and gas payments at the protocol level. It provides a native pathway for accounts to move away from vulnerable secp256k1 keys, supports signature aggregation, and allows for the introduction of new signature schemes without requiring a hard fork for each new scheme. Furthermore, it ensures that account validation and fee payment remain permissionless. Keyed nonces and recent roots are integral to the Frames core functionality for Hegotá.
EIP-8365, "BLS Withdrawal Credential Retirement," initiates the process of retiring withdrawal credentials still linked to vulnerable cryptography. This work can commence immediately, independent of the full post-quantum consensus design.
The "Frames-extension" package directly enhances account security. EIP-7906, "Transaction Assertions via State Diff Opcode," enables transactions to verify specific state effects before commitment, protecting against attacks like drainers. EIP-8298, "SETCODEFROM Code Reuse Instruction," allows delegated accounts to evolve into full smart-contract accounts. EIP-8151, "Account Code Restricted ecRecover," prevents legacy key authentication once an account possesses actual code. These last two EIPs pave the way for retiring secp256k1 as a master key for accounts.
The "bounding pair" of EIP-8279, "Block Access List Byte Floor," and EIP-8131, "Unified Transaction Content Floor," addresses worst-case block construction scenarios by establishing a predictable gas floor under adversarial block content. Any subsequent utilization of the resulting headroom will be a separate scope decision.
The safe delivery of FOCIL and Frames, and the rigorous testing of their interplay, forms the core engineering commitment for Hegotá. Any proposed additions must demonstrate a compelling necessity and clear how they impact this critical testing surface.
Anticipating the Future
The Protocol cluster has published a companion post detailing its Hegotá EIP tier list and providing explanations for each grading. This document is essential for understanding the specific technical decisions underpinning the fork’s scope.
To foster further transparency and community engagement, the Protocol cluster will host a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on r/ethereum on September 16th at 2:00 PM UTC. The session will cover the cluster’s priorities, the Hegotá tier list, and other pertinent topics. Participants are encouraged to submit questions in advance via a dedicated form, aiming for precise and impactful inquiries to facilitate a productive discussion. This initiative underscores Ethereum’s commitment to open dialogue and collaborative development as it navigates the complex transition towards a quantum-resistant future.
