Layla Zulfa
The Ethereum Foundation Protocol cluster has officially unveiled its strategic priorities through 2029, signaling an aggressive push towards quantum resistance and significant enhancements to the network’s foundational layers. This comprehensive update follows the welcoming of a trio of new cluster coordinators in May 2026, who have spent recent months aligning efforts across the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the broader ecosystem. The newly articulated vision emphasizes a commitment to long-term security, privacy, and scalability, with immediate implications for upcoming network upgrades, notably the impending Glamsterdam and the subsequent Hegotá hardforks.
The North Star: A Race Against the Quantum Clock
At the core of the Protocol cluster’s forward-looking strategy is an unwavering commitment to achieving quantum resistance across all three layers of Ethereum’s Layer 1 (L1) blockchain – execution, consensus, and data – by December 2029. This ambitious deadline is not arbitrary; it aligns with independently established migration targets set by major technology entities like Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft, all of whom anticipate the potential emergence of "Q-day" – the hypothetical point at which quantum computers become capable of breaking widely used cryptographic algorithms – as early as 2030.
The Protocol cluster acknowledges that the precise timing of Q-day remains uncertain and beyond human control. Nevertheless, by setting an aggressive internal target of 2029 for full post-quantum readiness, Ethereum aims to proactively secure its infrastructure against a future cryptographic threat that could compromise current public-key cryptography. This pre-emptive approach is deemed "secure" and "strategically responsible," sending a clear signal about Ethereum’s intent to endure for decades, if not centuries. While most credible estimates place Q-day later, or even suggest it might never arrive, the decision to plan for an early scenario reflects a cautious yet determined stance against existential risks. The cluster has declared this self-imposed deadline non-negotiable until at least January 2027, when quantum progress will be rigorously reassessed with input from external experts.
Navigating the Future: The Hardfork Cadence and Strategic Milestones
The path to quantum resistance and other core protocol enhancements is charted through a series of hardforks, each introducing critical upgrades. The current roadmap, often referred to as the "Strawmap," outlines a challenging yet essential delivery sequence.
A Tightly Paced Development Schedule
With the Glamsterdam hardfork slated for mainnet activation in December 2026, the Protocol cluster faces an intense development cadence. The journey from Glamsterdam to L, the hardfork designated for full post-quantum readiness, encompasses five subsequent hardforks. Achieving the December 2029 target for L necessitates an average cadence of approximately 7.2 months per hardfork. This schedule is remarkably aggressive, leaving minimal margin for delays or unforeseen complications in research, development, or testing. The complexity of these upgrades, particularly those involving fundamental cryptographic changes, underscores the monumental task ahead for client teams and researchers.
Introducing Minimum Viable Post-Quantum (MV-PQ)
Recognizing the inherent challenges of such an accelerated timeline, the August 19 Strawmap update introduced a crucial contingency milestone: Minimum Viable Post-Quantum (MV-PQ) L1 at J. This milestone, achievable with a more manageable 12-month cadence from Glamsterdam, is designed as a temporary safeguard. MV-PQ aims to ensure Ethereum can continue operating through Q-day, albeit potentially with reduced guarantees, should the full post-quantum readiness at L encounter delays. J is set to include the post-quantum public-key registry (from I), and critical components like the post-quantum heartbeat on the consensus layer, leanDA sampling on the data layer, and leanSPHINCS transactions on the execution layer. The full scope of "reduced guarantees" under MV-PQ is still being precisely defined by researchers, but the ultimate goal remains full resistance across all three layers by December 2029, including the complex work of post-quantum attestations required for complete consensus design.
Flexibility and Ecosystem-Wide Collaboration
The Protocol cluster also acknowledges the dynamic nature of such a roadmap. Post-J, the order of subsequent hardforks, specifically K and L*, may be adjusted. For instance, lean consensus could be moved forward by one fork, while mandatory execution proofs could be pushed back. This flexibility allows the roadmap to adapt as research matures and client development capacity becomes clearer.
Crucially, meeting these ambitious milestones demands an unprecedented level of teamwork and coordination across the entire Ethereum ecosystem. The linear sequence of hardforks is no longer sufficient; parallel delivery streams are essential. This means work on Hegotá will overlap with the maturation of I specifications and ongoing research for J through L*. The pipeline from fundamental research to mainnet deployment must accelerate significantly with each fork, requiring tighter communication within the Protocol cluster and active engagement with client teams, grant recipients, academic institutions, and the wider community. Delivering quantum-readiness will be an ecosystem-wide endeavor, necessitating contributions from a broad array of cryptographers, client developers, security reviewers, and testing experts, both within and beyond the Ethereum Foundation.
Five Pillars of Protocol Development: Multi-Fork Research Arcs
Beyond the immediate push for minimum viable post-quantum readiness, the Protocol cluster is simultaneously advancing several interconnected long-term goals, organized around five multi-fork research arcs: Fast Finality, Post-Quantum, Privacy, State, and zkEVM. These arcs represent continuous efforts to enhance Ethereum’s core capabilities and ensure its future resilience.
Fast Finality
This arc aims to dramatically reduce Ethereum’s time to finality from minutes to mere seconds. The current design direction involves decoupling finality from block production and re-architecting the consensus layer around an available chain and a dedicated finality gadget. Specifications and prototypes for this significant architectural shift are already underway, with decoupled consensus emerging as a leading candidate for inclusion in the I* hardfork. Faster finality enhances user experience, improves transaction certainty, and strengthens security against certain types of attacks.
Post-Quantum
As detailed previously, this arc is the primary driver for delivering the December 2029 quantum resistance commitment across all three L1 layers. A key differentiator in its approach is cryptographic agility for the execution layer. Native account abstraction, facilitated by innovations like "Frames," allows signature schemes to be swapped without requiring a hardfork for each new scheme. This provides crucial flexibility in a rapidly evolving cryptographic landscape. In contrast, the consensus layer’s cryptography and aggregation schemes, which are more fundamental to network operation, can only be changed via hardforks. Therefore, consensus cryptography will undergo extensive battle-testing and hardening before rollout, with consensus components waiting for a complete post-quantum design rather than being shipped incrementally.
Privacy
The privacy arc is dedicated to establishing privacy as a fundamental protocol guarantee on Ethereum. The goal is to empower users to transact, hold balances, and interact with applications without inadvertently exposing their financial history or relying on third parties for confidentiality. Initial work in this arc is slated to begin with Hegotá, focusing on delivering native, trustless, and censorship-resistant private transactions on Ethereum L1. Future efforts will expand to tackle post-quantum privacy at scale and explore encrypted mempools that conceal transaction contents until their inclusion in a block, further enhancing user anonymity and protecting against front-running.
State Management
The state arc addresses the critical challenge of state growth and efficient access, preventing them from becoming a limiting factor for Ethereum’s scalability and decentralization. This work encompasses migrating to a new trie structure, implementing mechanisms for sustainable state growth, and enabling decentralized access to both current and historical state data. The most significant design and migration efforts in this arc are anticipated to commence in I* and continue through subsequent hardforks, laying the groundwork for a more robust and accessible state layer.
zkEVM (Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine)
The zkEVM arc represents a transformative shift in how Ethereum blocks are validated. It aims to evolve execution proofs from an available and optional feature to an expected, and eventually mandatory, component of the network. Ultimately, validators will verify a succinct zero-knowledge proof of block validity rather than re-executing every transaction themselves. This drastically reduces computation requirements for validators, enhancing scalability and decentralization. Under the current Strawmap ordering, mandatory proofs are set to arrive in K. However, a potential reordering is under review, which could swap the PQ attestation and mandatory proofs milestones. This would move PQ attestations from L to K, and mandatory proofs from K to L*. Regardless of the precise timing, the drive to ship an L1 zkEVM will also significantly advance formal verification tooling, workflows, and verified cryptographic components, providing cross-cutting benefits to other research arcs, particularly post-quantum cryptography.
Prioritization and Implementation: The Protocol’s Operating Framework
The Protocol cluster operates under a clear imperative, first published in the July all-Protocol update: "Concentrate Protocol on what only Protocol can do and will do, and complete the Strawmap items that allow Ethereum to uphold the Mandate." The Mandate refers to Ethereum’s core principles of Censorship Resistance (CR), Open Source and Free (O), Privacy (P), and Security (S) – collectively known as CROPS.
The Revised Priority Ladder
The completion of Glamsterdam and the firm commitment to the December 2029 quantum resistance target have significantly reshaped the Protocol cluster’s priority ladder. Post-Glamsterdam, the focus has shifted, elevating post-quantum work from a long-horizon research concern to a near-fork delivery imperative.
| Priority Level | As of Q2 2026 | Post-Glamsterdam |
|---|---|---|
| P0 | Keep mainnet safe | Keep mainnet safe (unchanged) |
| P1 | Ship Glamsterdam and Hegotá without security or stability issues and in a timely manner | Ship the critical components of Hegotá, I, and J: the path to MV-PQ |
| P2 | Hold research and engineering capacity for the fork after next (I*) | Hold research and engineering capacity for K and L, focused on accelerating the remaining PQ items |
| P3 | Hold research capability for the five multi-year arcs (fast finality, post-quantum, privacy, state, and zkEVM) | Hold research capability for the four remaining arcs (fast finality, privacy, state, and zkEVM), with formal verification as cross-cutting tooling that advances all of them |
This revised ladder clearly places the path to Minimum Viable Post-Quantum (MV-PQ) at the highest priority (P1), immediately following the P0 imperative to maintain mainnet safety.
From Research to Mainnet: The Maturity Pipeline
The Protocol cluster employs a structured "maturity pipeline" to guide work from nascent ideas to mainnet deployment:
Research → EIP → Prototype → Devnet → PFI → CFI → SFI → Mainnet
Each step in this pipeline is designed to incrementally add evidence, reduce uncertainty, and establish clear ownership before the next commitment is made. This rigorous process ensures that only well-vetted and thoroughly tested features progress towards inclusion in a hardfork. For instance, a devnet stage might reveal issues that necessitate sending work back to the research phase for further refinement. The "Proposed for Inclusion (PFI)," "Considered for Inclusion (CFI)," and "Selected for Inclusion (SFI)" stages signal increasing confidence among AllCoreDevs but do not substitute for tangible implementation evidence. The Protocol cluster’s unique role lies in guiding ideas through this entire pipeline, ensuring robust development and secure deployment.
Hegotá: The Immediate Test of Ethereum’s New Direction
The upcoming Hegotá hardfork serves as the immediate and crucial test for the Protocol cluster’s new priorities and aggressive timeline. It is emphasized that Hegotá itself is not the quantum-resistant fork, but rather the pivotal hardfork that will determine whether subsequent quantum-focused upgrades can be delivered on schedule.
A Foundational Hardfork
Hegotá’s main engineering lift revolves around two SFI’d (Selected for Inclusion) headliners: EIP-7805 Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) on the consensus layer and EIP-8141 Frame Transaction on the execution layer. These two EIPs must ship together safely, with their complex interaction thoroughly tested as a core part of the fork’s development. This synergy is critical for ensuring the stability and functionality of the network post-Hegotá.
Key Components and Commitments
Hegotá makes specific, tangible commitments across the critical CROPS properties:
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Censorship Resistance (CR): EIP-7805 FOCIL is designed to significantly improve Ethereum’s transaction inclusion guarantees. It enables multiple validators to impose constraints on block builders by specifying a set of transactions that must be included in a block for it to be considered valid by attesters. This mechanism directly combats transaction censorship. Complementing this, EIP-8369 VOPS Profiles for FOCIL Eligibility defines which transactions are eligible for FOCIL and what validators must verify, extending FOCIL’s guarantees to future transaction types. Together, these EIPs represent Hegotá’s direct contribution to censorship and capture resistance.
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Privacy (P): Hegotá addresses fundamental protocol-level gaps in privacy support. EIP-8250 Keyed Nonces allows multiple users to share the same sender address, enhancing anonymity, while still ensuring their transactions have separate nonces to prevent blocking. EIP-8272 Recent Roots enables private transactions to utilize recent on-chain state in a format verifiable by FOCIL, thereby allowing them to benefit from its inclusion guarantees. These two EIPs remove significant barriers to trustless, censorship-resistant private activity on L1, and are slated to ship alongside Frames.
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Security (S): EIP-8141 Frame Transaction introduces programmability to transaction validation, execution, and gas payment at the protocol level. This innovation provides accounts with a native, secure route away from vulnerable secp256k1 keys, supports signature aggregation, and crucially, allows new signature schemes to be introduced without requiring a hardfork for each. It also maintains permissionless account validation and fee payment. The core Frames package for Hegotá is completed by Keyed Nonces and Recent Roots.
Further security enhancements include EIP-8365 BLS Withdrawal Credential Retirement, which initiates the process of retiring withdrawal credentials tied to vulnerable cryptography, a step that can begin immediately without awaiting the full post-quantum consensus design.
The "Frames-extension package" directly hardens accounts. EIP-7906 Transaction Assertions via State Diff Opcode enables transactions to verify specified effects before committing, offering protection against attacks like "drainers." EIP-8298 SETCODEFROM Code Reuse Instruction allows delegated accounts to evolve into full smart-contract accounts, while EIP-8151 Account Code Restricted ecRecover blocks legacy key authentication once an account has implemented real code. The latter two form a critical pathway for the eventual retirement of secp256k1 as a master key.
Finally, two "bounding pair" EIPs address worst-case block construction as a security measure: EIP-8279 Block Access List Byte Floor and EIP-8131 Unified Transaction Content Floor establish a predictable gas floor under adversarial block content. Any future utilization of the resulting headroom will be a separate scope decision.
Limited Scope for Consensus-Layer Additions
Given the aggressive timeline and the critical nature of FOCIL and Frames, the Protocol cluster has a near-zero appetite for additional consensus-layer scope beyond FOCIL, unless an addition directly supports post-quantum readiness. This strict limitation is strategic: every additional consensus-layer item draws from the same pool of researchers and client developers who are indispensable for specifying and prototyping decoupled consensus and preparing for I and J once Hegotá implementations are complete. The priority is to deliver FOCIL and Frames safely, rigorously testing their interaction, which constitutes Hegotá’s core engineering commitment.
Looking Ahead: Engagement and Transparency
The Ethereum Foundation Protocol cluster underscores its commitment to transparency and community engagement. A companion post, titled "EF Protocol: The Hegotá EIP Opinion Post and Tier List," has been published, providing detailed grades and explanations for every EIP considered for Hegotá. This document offers an in-depth look at the rationale behind the cluster’s views on each proposal.
To further facilitate dialogue and address community questions, the Protocol cluster will host a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on r/ethereum on September 16 at 2pm UTC. This interactive session will allow community members to engage directly with the cluster on these priorities, the Hegotá tier list, and other pertinent topics, reinforcing the open and collaborative spirit of Ethereum’s development.
