Ethereum core developers have begun the process of narrowing a field of 66 candidate proposals for Hegotá, the network upgrade targeted for 2027, with only one item, Fork-choice enforced inclusion lists (FOCIL), currently locked in for inclusion. FOCIL is designed to let validator committees force pending transactions into blocks, a change aimed at strengthening censorship resistance at the protocol level.
The rest of the list remains contested. Client teams are weighing competing proposals that touch censorship resistance, account abstraction, gas pricing and validator economics, according to the Hegotá hardfork meta specification. Hegotá follows Glamsterdam, an upgrade focused on scalability and layer-1 hardening that is expected to reach mainnet in the second half of 2026.
Privacy moves to the center of the debate
Three proposals aimed at giving Ethereum native privacy have drawn particular attention: Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250) and Recent Roots for Frame Transactions (EIP-8272). Toni Wahrstätter, a contributor on the Ethereum Foundation's Architecture team, argued on X that the trio should join FOCIL in the upgrade, writing that together they would “unlock native privacy, allowing privacy apps to work without having to rely on intermediaries.”
A fourth privacy proposal, EIP-8182, has also entered the conversation. It specifies a shared shielded-pool system contract that would let standard wallets and ENS addresses send private ETH and ERC-20 transfers without relying on separate privacy applications that fragment liquidity and anonymity sets across isolated pools. Notably, EIP-8182 would introduce no new precompile, opcode or transaction type beyond installing the pool contract at fork activation, a relatively lean footprint for a protocol-level privacy change.
What's scheduled next
At the Aug. 13 All Core Developers Execution call, teams agreed to compare EIP-8141 against a competing proposal, EIP-8130, in a breakout session set for Aug. 25, with a decision targeted for the Aug. 27 ACDE meeting. The next general Ethereum developer call is scheduled for Monday at 2:00 pm UTC, where the broader list of 66 proposals is expected to be discussed further.
The Architecture team's roadmap, which Wahrstätter helps maintain, lays out seven network upgrades through 2029, with quantum readiness and privacy positioned as recurring themes across that timeline rather than one-off additions bolted onto a single fork.
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Whether Hegotá ultimately ships with a full native privacy stack or a narrower subset will depend on how client teams resolve the overlapping proposals in the coming weeks. With 65 items still competing for a limited number of slots, the August breakout sessions are likely to set the tone for how aggressively Ethereum pursues protocol-level privacy ahead of 2027.
