Following a transition period that welcomed a trio of new cluster coordinators back in May, the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster has officially published its comprehensive long-term roadmap and priority framework. After months of alignment and ecosystem-wide collaboration across the Ethereum Foundation and broader developer communities, the cluster has detailed its core objectives for the network through December 2029. With the upcoming "Glamsterdam" upgrade approaching mainnet, the Protocol team has transitioned directly into scoping the subsequent hard fork, provisionally known as Hegota, utilizing a transparent and community-driven evaluation process.
The recent scoping cycle brought together roughly 60 researchers and engineers who reviewed 62 proposed Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), conducted multiple Glamsterdam retrospectives, and participated in cluster-wide working sessions. This collaborative effort has yielded a unified set of priorities centered on a critical path that begins with the Hegota upgrade and extends deep into the decade. To accompany this strategic vision, the Protocol cluster has also released a detailed EIP opinion post and tier list evaluating every candidate under consideration for Hegota.
I. The North Star
The overarching objective for the EF Protocol cluster is ambitious: to make Ethereum Layer 1 fully quantum-resistant across all three core layers—execution, consensus, and data—by December 2029. This self-imposed timeline aligns directly with independent cryptographic migration targets established by major global technology leaders, including Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft. While exact timelines for the advent of cryptographically relevant quantum computers, often referred to as "Q-day," remain outside of anyone’s direct control, the Protocol team has chosen to establish a firm deadline rather than waiting for absolute certainty. Under current planning assumptions, Ethereum Layer 1 is preparing for the possibility of Q-day arriving as early as 2030.
Although most credible industry estimates place Q-day further out—and some suggest it may never materialize—shipping post-quantum readiness early is viewed as both a secure and strategically responsible course of action. It sends an unequivocal signal to the global financial and technological sectors that Ethereum is engineered to endure for decades and centuries to come. While Ethereum’s institutional instinct has historically been to distrust all-in bets, the Protocol cluster is deliberately making an exception here because quantum timelines cannot be neatly scheduled. This self-imposed deadline will be treated as non-negotiable at least until January 2027, at which point quantum computing progress will be rigorously reassessed with guidance from external cryptographic experts.
II. The Plan
Client development teams are expected to begin implementing Hegota upgrades in late Q4 2026. Under the July Strawmap, full post-quantum readiness is slated for an upgrade designated as L, arriving five hard forks after Glamsterdam. Shipping Glamsterdam in December 2026 and reaching L by December 2029 requires an exceptionally aggressive average cadence of roughly 7.2 months per fork, leaving very little margin for operational error or unexpected engineering delays.
To mitigate this risk, an August Strawmap update introduced a Minimum Viable Post-Quantum (MV-PQ) Layer 1 milestone at J. This contingency plan places the post-quantum public-key registry in I, while positioning the post-quantum heartbeat on the consensus layer, leanDA data sampling, and leanSPHINCS transactions on the execution layer at J*. Achieving this milestone within a 12-month cadence from Glamsterdam provides a viable safety net by December 2029.
The MV-PQ framework is explicitly designed as a temporary safeguard to keep Ethereum operating securely through Q-day under reduced guarantees while researchers continue refining the permanent architecture. Full quantum resistance across execution, consensus, and data remains the ultimate December 2029 target, with ongoing work required for post-quantum attestations necessary to finalize economic finality. Furthermore, the sequencing of forks following J* remains flexible, with potential adjustments allowing the Strawmap to swap certain milestones depending on research maturation and client development capacity. Meeting these rigorous schedules will require unprecedented, parallel collaboration across the entire Ethereum ecosystem, engaging client teams, independent researchers, academic institutions, security reviewers, and grant recipients alike.
III. The Five Multi-Fork Research Arcs
To manage its complex workload, the Protocol cluster organizes its long-horizon and near-horizon initiatives around five distinct multi-fork research arcs: fast finality, post-quantum readiness, privacy, state management, and the zkEVM transition.
The fast finality arc aims to reduce Ethereum’s finality latency from minutes down to seconds by decoupling block production from finality and restructuring the consensus layer around an available chain and a dedicated finality gadget. Specifications and prototypes are already underway, with decoupled consensus serving as a leading candidate for the I* upgrade.
The post-quantum arc spans all three foundational layers to meet the December 2029 deadline. The execution layer relies heavily on cryptographic agility, facilitated by native account abstraction that allows signature schemes to be swapped without requiring a hard fork for every new scheme. Conversely, the consensus layer cannot utilize cryptographic agility due to the rigid nature of its consensus and aggregation cryptography; instead, consensus components are thoroughly battle-tested and hardened before a unified post-quantum design is rolled out.
The privacy arc seeks to establish privacy as a native protocol guarantee, enabling users to hold balances, execute transactions, and interact with decentralized applications without exposing financial histories or relying on trusted intermediaries. Work on this initiative is slated to begin during Hegota to deliver trustless, censorship-resistant private transactions on Layer 1, paving the way for scalable post-quantum privacy and encrypted mempools in subsequent phases.
The state management arc prevents state growth and access overhead from becoming structural bottlenecks for the network. Key initiatives include migrating to a modernized trie structure, ensuring sustainable long-term state growth, and establishing decentralized access to current and historical state data, with major design and migration efforts scheduled to commence in I* and beyond.
Finally, the zkEVM arc progressively transforms execution proofs from optional features into mandatory verifications, allowing validators to verify succinct zero-knowledge proofs rather than re-executing every historical block. While mandatory proofs are currently scheduled for K* under the existing Strawmap, potential reorderings are being evaluated to optimize the sequencing of post-quantum consensus milestones. Regardless of the exact ordering, the push toward an L1 zkEVM drives crucial formal verification tooling and cryptographic components that benefit the entire protocol roadmap.
IV. How We Set Priorities and Ship Them
The foundational imperative guiding the Protocol cluster remains focused on concentrating resources strictly on what only Protocol can accomplish, while fulfilling the core items necessary for Ethereum to uphold its foundational mandate. With the completion of Glamsterdam and the firm commitment to a 2029 post-quantum timeline, the priority framework has evolved to integrate formal verification as a cross-cutting tooling layer across all research arcs.
Maintaining network safety remains the absolute top priority. Subsequent tiers focus on delivering the critical components required for the path to minimum viable post-quantum readiness, securing engineering capacity for future upgrades, and sustaining long-term research across fast finality, privacy, state, and zkEVM arcs. Proposals must successfully traverse a rigorous maturity pipeline moving from initial research through EIP specification, prototyping, devnets, and peer review before ever reaching mainnet consideration.
V. The Next Fork, as the First Test
As the Protocol cluster evaluates the upcoming Hegota upgrade, the focus centers on whether upcoming post-quantum forks can be delivered on schedule. Hegota is anchored by two primary features on the consensus and execution layers: Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) via EIP-7805 and Frame Transactions via EIP-8141. These key components must be deployed safely together, with their interactions thoroughly tested as part of the upgrade’s main engineering workload. Beyond these features, appetite for additional consensus-layer scope remains extremely low to avoid diverting vital engineering resources away from post-quantum preparations.
The scope of Hegota is carefully aligned with the core principles of censorship resistance, open-source development, privacy, and security. FOCIL and associated validator eligibility profiles serve as the network’s direct commitments to mitigating builder capture and transaction censorship. Simultaneously, privacy-enhancing proposals such as Keyed Nonces and Recent Roots remove structural barriers for privacy applications on Layer 1. On the security front, Frame Transactions introduce programmable transaction validation, execution, and gas payment at the protocol level, offering a native migration path away from vulnerable legacy cryptographic keys while bolstering account security across the network.
VI. What to Expect
Detailed explanations and tier-list grades for every EIP considered for the Hegota upgrade are available in the companion post published by the Protocol cluster. To further engage with the community, the team is hosting a dedicated Reddit AMA on r/ethereum to discuss these strategic priorities, the Hegota EIP evaluations, and broader roadmap developments.
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
