Ethereum targets quantum-resistant L1 by 2029

The Ethereum Foundation has published ratings for 62 Hegotá proposals after collecting 397 assessments from about 60 protocol specialists across nine teams.

The Ethereum Foundation said in a Sept. 7 post on X that its Protocol Cluster had released two articles covering Hegotá and the long-term work planned for Ethereum’s base layer.

Ethereum ranks 62 Hegotá proposals

One article, called the Hegotá EIP Opinion Post and Tier List, evaluates all 62 Ethereum Improvement Proposals under consideration for the upgrade. According to the Foundation, it is the Protocol Cluster’s first shared tier list covering a single network upgrade.

Around 60 researchers, engineers, and specialists from nine teams submitted 397 individual ratings. Participants also held live discussions about proposals that produced differing opinions, allowing teams to compare technical benefits, development costs and possible conflicts before Hegotá’s scope is settled.

Ratings do not mean that all 62 proposals will reach Ethereum’s mainnet. The list records how members of the Protocol Cluster view each proposal while client developers, researchers and the Ethereum community continue assessing which changes can be built and tested within Hegotá’s development schedule.

In August, crypto.news reported on Hegotá as developers considered proposals related to censorship resistance, native account abstraction, privacy, validator economics, and gas pricing. At the time, the official meta EIP listed EIP-7805, known as Fork Choice-enforced Inclusion Lists, as the only feature scheduled for inclusion.

FOCIL would allow a committee of validators to publish lists of eligible transactions that block builders should include. Under the design, attesters could reject a block when a builder improperly leaves out listed transactions, reducing the influence that concentrated block-building infrastructure can exert over transaction inclusion.

Execution client teams were also asked to rank their preferred Hegotá proposals by Sept. 10. Previous discussions covered competing designs for native account abstraction, shorter slot times, state-growth pricing, privacy tools, and proposed changes to validator incentives, although consideration did not guarantee inclusion.

Ethereum’s public roadmap currently places Hegotá in 2027, after the Glamsterdam upgrade planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. The roadmap remains open to revision because Ethereum upgrades require implementation, development networks, public testnets, and client coordination before mainnet activation.

Quantum resistance becomes a 2029 commitment

The Protocol Cluster’s second article, Current and Emerging Priorities, sets out commitments and research tracks that extend beyond one hard fork. Among them, the cluster has set December 2029 as the deadline for making Ethereum Layer 1 resistant to attacks from quantum computers.

Fredrik Svantes, who leads protocol coordination at the Ethereum Foundation, said the cluster is “aggressively targeting” a quantum-resistant L1 no later than December 2029. In a separate X post, he said the commitment affects which proposals the teams recommend for Hegotá and how they assess other protocol work.

Ethereum is not quantum-resistant today. Its account and validator systems use cryptographic methods that future quantum machines could potentially break, although the Foundation’s quantum-resistance documentation says existing hardware remains far below the capacity required for such an attack.

Preparation involves more than replacing one algorithm. Ethereum researchers have divided the work across user accounts, validator signatures, consensus, data availability and zero-knowledge proof systems, each of which carries different performance and migration requirements.

Account-level experiments have already started. In June, Ethereum researcher Nico said users could add post-quantum protection through smart contract logic for about $0.07 per account, without waiting for a hard fork. The proposed method uses SPHINCS-based signatures, but the account protection would not make the entire network resistant to quantum attacks.

A draft submitted on Aug. 24 addresses another part of the migration. Under the proposed design, a replacement validator deposit contract would accept variable-length public keys and assign identifiers to different signature systems.

As the deposit proposal explains, the first identifier would preserve Ethereum’s existing BLS deposits, while later identifiers could support post-quantum signature schemes. The proposal does not select a replacement algorithm, and Ethereum would still need a consensus-layer change to verify and process signatures created under any new system.

Developers also described an irreversible migration switch that could eventually stop new BLS deposits after an agreed transition period. Existing validators, staking providers, and client teams would need time to update their infrastructure before such a switch could safely take effect.

Hegotá connects security with account changes

Native account abstraction could support the quantum-security plan by allowing Ethereum accounts to use different methods for authorizing transactions. Ethereum’s roadmap says programmable validation could add social recovery, spending controls and sponsored gas while providing a route away from one fixed signature scheme.

Privacy, scaling, and proof verification also remain part of the same development program. In August, Vitalik Buterin’s updated Ethereum roadmap placed post-quantum scaling beside native rollups, stronger privacy tools and AI-assisted formal verification.

Hegotá will not complete every part of that program. The tier-list process instead gives protocol teams a shared record of which EIPs have support, which require more research, and which may create too much complexity for the planned upgrade.

Proposals must still pass through Ethereum’s usual development process. Client teams must implement accepted changes, operate development networks, and run public testnets before core developers can agree on a mainnet activation date.

US standards add pressure to the 2029 deadline

For U.S. investors and companies using Ethereum, the Foundation’s timetable sits close to the federal government’s own post-quantum transition. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has told organizations to begin replacing cryptography that quantum computers could defeat.

In August 2024, NIST approved three standards for post-quantum security. FIPS 203 covers a key-encapsulation method, while FIPS 204 and FIPS 205 specify lattice-based and hash-based digital signature systems.

NIST said the standards were ready for immediate use and later advised organizations to identify systems that depend on vulnerable public-key algorithms. Its transition plan calls for high-risk systems to move earlier, with quantum-vulnerable algorithms removed from NIST standards by 2035.

Ethereum’s December 2029 commitment does not create a U.S. regulatory requirement for ETH holders, exchanges, custodians or exchange-traded products. It does, however, fall within the migration period established by the U.S. technical standards agency, which gives American infrastructure providers a federal reference point when assessing their cryptographic systems.

The Foundation has scheduled an ask-me-anything session for Sept. 16 at 14:00 UTC in Reddit’s r/ethereum community. Protocol Cluster members will take questions about the Hegotá rankings, disputed proposals, and the priorities described in the two articles.