Co-Founder Details Shift to ‘Cryptographic World Computer’

The transition of Ethereum from a traditional distributed ledger to a hybrid system using advanced cryptography was detailed by co-founder Vitalik Buterin in a September 27 essay. Comparing the network’s state in 2015, 2025, and 2030 against the original Bitcoin whitepaper, Buterin outlined a future where the current infrastructure evolves into what he terms a “cryptographic world computer.”

The co-founder emphasized that the network’s long-term roadmap, known as the Strawmap, designates an upcoming upgrade called Hegota as a turning point. Scheduled for next year, this fork will act as a bridge between conventional designs and a new era focused heavily on quantum-safe technologies.

“If you look at the Strawmap, Hegota - the fork planned for next year - is likely to be Ethereum’s last ‘normal’ fork, with features and technology that would be recognizable to someone in 2015,” Buterin stated on his personal blog.

Redefining Verification

Before transitioning entirely to advanced cryptographic methods like recursive STARKs and automated formal verification, the Hegota fork will introduce foundational changes. Early planning for the upgrade includes Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL). This feature allows a validator committee to propose transaction lists that block builders must honor, increasing complexity for any attempts to censor transactions.

Hegota is also expected to deploy frame transactions, enabling individual accounts to run custom verification logic and opt for quantum-resistant signatures. The upgrade is set to introduce more flexible accounts, supporting social recovery, sponsored gas fees, and spending limits. These additions align with other proposals forming the network's roadmap, such as EIP-8288, Lean consensus, and improved state management.

Following Hegota, the core property of network verification will undergo a massive overhaul. Under the operational model from 2010, network nodes were required to download transaction data and re-execute every block's calculations to confirm accuracy. By 2030, Buterin envisions nodes verifying smaller cryptographic proofs instead, utilizing technologies like SNARK proofs and Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS).

This shift means heavy computation could be offloaded to decentralized networks operating in parallel, while the main Ethereum layer strictly verifies the provided cryptographic proofs. Doing so would significantly lower the hardware requirements for individuals looking to run nodes.

Performance Targets

Users interacting with the upgraded infrastructure would experience these technical changes primarily through increased transaction speeds. Buterin targets a future with slot times of 4 to 8 seconds and transaction finality reached within 8 to 32 seconds. For context, the 2015 iteration of the network required roughly 200 seconds to achieve 12 confirmations, operating on blocks that took around 17 seconds.

Despite the detailed roadmap, significant engineering hurdles remain. Managing access to vast amounts of state data poses a complex challenge, and making zero-knowledge proofs efficient and safe continues to be an open problem, though Buterin noted that artificial intelligence tools are already assisting in their optimization.

Before the Hegota shift can occur, developers are focused on a preceding upgrade named Glamsterdam. The Sepolia testnet fork for Glamsterdam is slated for October 6, with its mainnet launch listed for the fourth quarter of 2026 without a confirmed exact date.