Ethereum Foundation Sets 2029 Quantum Target and Narrows Hegotá Scope

The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster has set a firm December 2029 target for making Ethereum’s Layer 1 resistant to quantum attacks across execution, consensus and data, and used that deadline to tighten the scope of Hegotá, the upgrade after Glamsterdam. The cluster produced the first unified tier list for Hegotá, grading 62 submitted EIPs and involving about 60 staff members who cast 397 grades before contested items were debated. Only two proposals earned S-tier "must ship" status: EIP-7805 (FOCIL) and EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions). The Foundation described FOCIL as a mechanism letting multiple validators require eligible transactions to appear in a block, reducing reliance on centralized block builders, while Frame Transactions would make account validation, execution and gas payment programmable at the protocol level and enable new signature schemes without separate hard forks. The cluster said these two must land together because their interaction defines the primary engineering and testing burden for Hegotá. Several related A-tier items were paired with the headliners: EIP-8369 (transaction eligibility and validator checks) accompanies FOCIL, while Frames is linked with keyed nonces and recent roots to support private transactions and shared-sender flows. Other A-tier work includes EIP-8365 to begin retiring withdrawal credentials tied to cryptography vulnerable to quantum attacks; optional execution proofs and bundled attestation propagation are expected but sit below the two locked-in proposals. Some proposals were given lower priority or declined. Quick Slots, which would shorten slot time, received a B grade and could be reconsidered only after S- and A-tier devnets are stable and if additional work is completed. Independent consensus- and execution-layer syncing and Hash-Chain RANDAO were also B-rated. Several validator-facing changes and issuance-related items were declined for Hegotá: custom sweep thresholds, withdrawal-credential preregistration, a beacon-block reporting field, a tapered issuance burn, and a mandatory burn of execution rewards. The cluster said issuance and reward policy belong in a broader ecosystem process and noted that declining the tapered issuance burn was not a judgment on its merits. The quantum deadline affects broader roadmap sequencing. Achieving full post-quantum readiness five forks after Glamsterdam would require an average of about 7.2 months per fork; a fallback goal of two forks after Hegotá could be met on a 12-month cadence but would offer reduced guarantees through a potential Q-day. The Foundation is also weighing whether to bring post-quantum attestations earlier in the roadmap (to K*) and push mandatory execution proofs later (to L*), a swap that would accelerate consensus-level post-quantum work while delaying the shift from re-execution to succinct verification pending further research and client capacity assessments.