Vitalik Buterin Calls Hegota Ethereum's Last Normal Fork
After Hegota, Ethereum will shift toward STARKs, quantum security, and faster finality, according to Buterin. The upgrade is still early in the planning stages, with FOCIL and frame transactions as the first pieces.
Key Takeaways
- Vitalik Buterin says the planned Hegota upgrade will probably be the network's last “normal” Ethereum fork.
- After Hegota, the focus shifts to recursive STARKs, formal verification, stronger consensus, and quantum security.
- Hegota is still early in the schedule and comes after Glamsterdam, whose mainnet launch is mentioned for Q4 2026.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin says the planned Hegota upgrade will probably be the network's last “normal” fork. After that, he says the focus will shift to heavier cryptography, quantum-safe designs, and other major changes to the foundation of Ethereum.
Hegota as the Last Regular Fork
Buterin wrote this in an essay on his personal blog, where he compared Ethereum in 2015, 2025, and 2030 with the original Bitcoin white paper. He also referred to the Strawmap, Ethereum's long-term roadmap, and called Hegota the fork that someone from 2015 would still recognize.
According to him, the work after Hegota is mainly about recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus, and quantum security. Recursive STARKs and quantum-resistant cryptography were also central earlier this year in his Lean Ethereum plan. In an earlier essay, Buterin already described Ethereum as a cryptographic world computer, with more emphasis on proofs and off-chain computations to help the network scale more efficiently.
Hegota itself is still in an early planning phase. On Ethereum.org, two changes are listed for now: Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists, or FOCIL, and frame transactions. FOCIL lets a committee of validators propose transaction lists that block builders have to follow. Frame transactions give each account more custom verification logic and the option to choose quantum-resistant signatures.
What Changes After Hegota
In his essay, Buterin outlines a broader shift in how Ethereum works. He expects nodes will no longer need to re-execute every block by 2030, but instead verify a cryptographic proof while using Peer Data Availability Sampling.
That should also show up in the network's speed. His goal is a slot time of about 4 to 8 seconds and finality within roughly 8 to 32 seconds. For comparison, Ethereum needed about 200 seconds in 2015 to reach 12 confirmations.
Buterin ties that development to a broader effort to make Ethereum future-proof. The path to quantum resistance is an important part of that, with 2029 as the target in the roadmap he outlined earlier. He also points out that artificial intelligence is already helping optimize zero-knowledge proofs, although he says they are still difficult to make efficient and secure.
Why This Matters
For European crypto readers, this shows that Ethereum is not just working on separate upgrades, but on a much longer technical transition. That could matter for teams building on Ethereum, like wallets, DeFi apps, and infrastructure services, because changes in verification, finality, and signatures directly affect how the network is used. At the same time, part of this roadmap still depends on further development, so the exact timing of the next steps is not fully locked in yet.
For Hegota itself, Ethereum is still looking at an earlier step first. The upgrade is supposed to follow Glamsterdam, whose Sepolia testnet fork is scheduled for October 6. Ethereum.org lists Glamsterdam's mainnet launch for Q4 2026, but without a confirmed date.
