Ethereum’s development community is now actively defining the contents of its next major network upgrade, Hegotá, which is scheduled for delivery in 2027. According to Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter, developers currently have 66 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) under consideration.
Over the coming series of core developer calls, this extensive list will be carefully narrowed so that only those proposals with realistic prospects of full implementation, development network testing, public testnet deployment, and mainnet readiness in 2027 move forward.
Ethereum's next year's upgrade, Hegotá, is being scoped right now.
66 proposals are on the table and over the next few core dev calls, this list will be narrowed down to the EIPs that get implementations, devnets, testnets, and a realistic chance of shipping in 2027. What…
— Toni Wahrstätter ⟠ (@nero_eth) August 16, 2026
Any proposal that fails to make the cut will have to wait for a subsequent fork, making the present selection process especially consequential for the network’s near-term direction.
A significant portion of the discussion has focused on enhancing privacy capabilities at the protocol level.
The standout proposal in this area is Frame Transactions, formally known as EIP-8141.
This change would give accounts far greater flexibility by allowing them to specify their own rules for how transactions are authorized, executed, and paid for, rather than forcing every participant to follow a uniform, rigid structure.
Practical benefits could include the ability for one party to cover gas fees on behalf of another, the bundling of multiple operations into a single transaction, or the adoption of alternative cryptographic approval methods without requiring users to abandon their existing addresses.
Two supporting proposals are designed to resolve specific technical obstacles that appear when many private transactions originate from the same account.
Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250) would introduce independent counters for different transaction streams instead of relying on a single sequential nonce.
As a result, a delayed or stuck transaction would no longer block every subsequent transaction from the same account.
EIP-8272, sometimes referred to as Root References, would enable a transaction to demonstrate its validity by referencing a recent cryptographic record rather than depending on state information that might shift while the transaction sits in the mempool.
When combined, these three proposals would substantially reduce the external infrastructure—such as specialized relays or intermediary services—that privacy-focused applications currently require to function effectively.
It is important to emphasize that these changes would not render the entire Ethereum network private by default.
Ordinary transfers of ether between standard addresses would continue to be fully transparent and publicly visible, just as they are today.
The new tools would simply equip application developers with stronger native primitives, allowing privacy-preserving systems to operate with fewer third-party dependencies and reduced opportunities for metadata leakage that could compromise user anonymity.
At present, only one proposal has been firmly locked in for Hegotá: FOCIL, short for Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (EIP-7805).
This mechanism would allow a designated committee of validators to assemble lists of pending transactions that block builders are obligated to include.
By removing unilateral discretion from any single builder, FOCIL is expected to meaningfully strengthen the network’s resistance to censorship.
The remaining proposals span a wide array of other priorities.
These include adjustments to data and state-growth pricing (such as EIP-8131, EIP-8279, and EIP-8368) that would support higher gas limits, potentially reaching toward 600 million; shorter slot times (EIP-8198); modifications to issuance and validator rewards (EIP-8363); anti-correlation penalties (EIP-7716); various EVM improvements and simplifications; and the first formal discussions of zkEVM and post-quantum cryptography-related changes.
Wahrstätter has noted that while some of these items may appear less glamorous than privacy features, the pricing and scaling work in particular represents some of the most important short-term progress the network can make.
Hegotá will follow the Glamsterdam upgrade, which developers are working to complete by the end of 2026.
Glamsterdam itself focuses on scalability enhancements, Layer-1 security improvements, and greater usability.
With Glamsterdam already more than 250 days into its development cycle, the community is under pressure to keep subsequent upgrades on a reliable annual cadence.
Developers have stressed that a fork cannot function as an open wishlist; hard choices must be made about what the network should become in the immediate next step versus what must wait for later.
Community input remains welcome during this window.
Stakeholders who believe a particular proposal should or should not be included in Hegotá are encouraged to present their reasoning publicly or directly to core teams.
The decisions reached in the next few weeks will determine not only the technical features available in 2027 but also the overall balance between privacy, scalability, security, and practical deliverability that defines Ethereum’s next phase of evolution.