Ethereum developers are narrowing a list of 66 proposals for Hegotá, the network’s next major upgrade after Glamsterdam, now targeted for 2027 after Glamsterdam itself slipped from its original first-half-2026 target to the fourth quarter of this year.
Why the Timeline Shifted
Earlier in 2026, the Ethereum Foundation had targeted Glamsterdam for the first half of the year, with Hegotá expected to follow later in 2026.
That schedule slipped, and developers only recently launched Platåberget, a public testnet for Glamsterdam, on August 13, designed to run for several months before moving to Ethereum’s longer-lived Sepolia and Hoodi testnets ahead of mainnet activation.
The Glamsterdam fork itself was scheduled to activate on Platåberget later the same week the testnet launched, giving developers a stable environment to catch problems before the upgrade reaches mainnet, unlike the shorter-lived devnets used earlier in the process.
Because Glamsterdam pushed back, Hegotá moved with it and is now targeted for 2027 rather than later this year.
Glamsterdam itself introduces changes that could break existing tools. The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol DevOps team warned that any tool relying on a hardcoded maximum gas limit will break and needs updating, and separately flagged EIP-8037, which introduces a distinct state-gas dimension for operations that create new state.
Under this change, a plain ETH transfer to an existing account still costs 21,000 gas, but sending ETH to a new account incurs an additional state-gas charge on top of that.
Developers whose software assumes 21,000 gas covers every ETH transfer, or that estimates costs using only one gas dimension, will need to update that logic before Glamsterdam activates on mainnet.
Glamsterdam also includes enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, and increased limits on contract and initialization-code sizes.
The Privacy Package at the Center of Hegotá
Of the 66 proposals under review for Hegotá, the one drawing the most attention is Frame Transactions, EIP-8141, which would let an account define how a transaction is approved, executed, and paid for, rather than forcing every user through Ethereum’s current fixed structure.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter, a co-author of the proposal, described frames as “a much more expressive transaction format” central to Ethereum’s planned transaction experience.
In practical terms, this could mean a wallet where someone else covers the gas fee, several actions bundled into a single payment, or an account’s approval cryptography changing without moving to an entirely new address.
Wahrstätter has specifically tied Frame Transactions to privacy applications. Combined with two companion proposals, Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250), which let an account use separate transaction counters so one delayed transaction doesn’t block everything queued behind it, and Recent Roots (EIP-8272), which lets a transaction prove itself against a recent state reference without depending on information that might change while it waits, privacy pools could potentially pay their own network fees without relying on a third-party relayer.
“Together with Frames, these enable privacy pools where the pool itself can pay fees, removing the need for intermediaries,” Wahrstätter said. “Add FOCIL support, and privacy transactions also gain protocol-level inclusion guarantees.”
A related proposal, Transaction Assertions (EIP-7906), would let wallets define conditions that must remain true when a transaction processes, giving users a way to limit what can happen after they have already signed and submitted it.
It’s important to be precise about what this package would and wouldn’t do. Ethereum itself would not become private. A standard transfer between two ordinary addresses would remain exactly as visible as it is today. Privacy would still be handled entirely by applications built on top of Ethereum, which would simply need less outside infrastructure, like relayers, to do that work.
FOCIL Is the Only Confirmed Piece So Far
Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists, or FOCIL, EIP-7805, is currently the only proposal confirmed for Hegotá.
The design lets a committee of validators publish lists of transactions that block builders are expected to include, and attesters can reject a proposed block if its builder improperly left eligible transactions off that list.
Ethereum developers have framed this as a way to protect transaction access as block production becomes more specialized and concentrated among a smaller number of large builders.
FOCIL would not make any transaction private on its own, but privacy-focused applications would benefit specifically, since they would no longer depend entirely on a given block builder’s willingness to include them.
Frame Transactions, by contrast, remains under consideration rather than confirmed, and Ethereum client teams are separately comparing it against a competing account-abstraction design, EIP-8130, with a decision targeted for an August 27 All Core Developers Execution call following an August 25 breakout meeting.
Not Everyone Agrees on How Much Hegotá Should Include
Ethlabs, an independent Ethereum research lab launched in June 2026 by former Ethereum Foundation contributors and backed by BitMine, SharpLink, and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, has argued Hegotá should stay tightly scoped rather than absorb every proposal competing for inclusion.
The group strongly supports both FOCIL and Frame Transactions, calling Frames the best native account-abstraction proposal for Ethereum’s base layer, though it noted Frames still needs substantial additional work before accounts can function consistently across layer-2 networks.
Ethlabs has separately recommended rejecting two specific proposals for this cycle. EIP-8375 would burn part of the value committed by certain external builder bids, over concerns it could encourage side-channel payments without established research consensus, and EIP-8182 would enable private ETH and token transfers directly, with Ethlabs arguing that proposal carries enough zero-knowledge complexity to deserve its own standalone headline upgrade instead of being bundled into Hegotá.
Privacy Technology Remains a Contested Legal Backdrop
These proposals arrive against an unsettled legal backdrop for crypto privacy tools generally. The US Treasury removed sanctions against Tornado Cash in March 2025 after reviewing the legal and policy questions raised by applying sanctions to technology-based financial activity, while stating it remained concerned about North Korean hackers and other illicit actors using digital assets.
A Manhattan jury convicted Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm in August 2025 of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, though jurors reached no verdict on separate money-laundering and sanctions charges.
Prosecutors alleged Tornado Cash had transmitted more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds, including funds tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, while Storm’s defense argued the protocol ran through autonomous, open-source software that its developers didn’t control transaction by transaction.
What Comes Next
Client teams must submit their Hegotá preference lists by September 10, after developers finalize the proposed-for-inclusion list around August 27, and any proposal lacking a clear champion will be automatically deferred from this cycle.
What this means for you: nothing here changes how Ethereum works today, and even Frame Transactions making the final cut would not make the base network private, only what privacy applications built on top of it can offer more efficiently.
If you build or rely on tools that estimate gas costs or assume a fixed 21,000 gas transfer cost, the more immediate action item is to test against Glamsterdam’s new state-gas dimension well before its Q4 2026 mainnet activation, rather than waiting on Hegotá’s separate 2027 timeline.
