Ethereum Foundation Flags EIP-7805 and EIP-8141 as Must-Ship for Ethereum (ETH) Hegotá

FOCIL and Frame Transactions Lead Hegotá

The Ethereum Foundation has designated two Ethereum (ETH) improvement proposals as “must ship” for the network’s next hard fork, Hegotá, narrowing the upgrade around censorship resistance and more flexible account authentication. In a ranking released on Monday, the Foundation’s Protocol cluster assessed 62 proposed Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), drawing on input from roughly 60 researchers and engineers across the cluster, and for the first time issued a unified view for a single upgrade rather than separate opinions from individual teams. The complete ranking is available in the Foundation’s official Hegotá EIP publication.

The two headliners are EIP-7805, known as FOCIL, and EIP-8141, or Frame Transactions, positioned as the consensus- and execution-layer centerpieces of Hegotá. FOCIL gives users a route to have eligible transactions included without relying on centralized block builders — mechanically, multiple validators can propose inclusion lists each slot, so no single builder can quietly blackball a transaction. Frame Transactions introduces native account abstraction and opens a path toward post-quantum authentication; combined with two companion proposals, it could provide protocol-level building blocks for privacy applications. We previously covered how developers locked EIP-8141 Frame Transactions into the 2027 Hegotá window.

The must-ship label carries scheduling force. The Foundation stated that if either proposal runs into trouble, Hegotá’s timeline should shift before the proposal is dropped. Beyond the headliners, 15 proposals sit in the A-tier, meaning they are expected to ship unless development or testing constraints force cuts; another eight remain candidates for inclusion, seven landed below the line without being ruled out, and 28 were declined outright. The list is advisory input to the scope decision rather than a final specification, since Hegotá’s contents are still being finalized.

Quantum Resistance Deadline Set for 2029

A companion Foundation paper set out the Protocol cluster’s current and long-term development priorities, and its most consequential target is defensive: making Ethereum’s base layer resistant to quantum computing attacks by December 2029. The deadline matters because sufficiently large quantum machines could eventually break the elliptic-curve signatures securing existing accounts, and Frame Transactions’ account abstraction is the first protocol-level step toward migrating authentication models. The evaluation behind Hegotá’s scope was broad — nine teams within the cluster took part, contributing 397 evaluation comments in total, with some contested proposals debated in face-to-face meetings. The Foundation said the scope reflects the cluster’s long-term technical commitments and priorities agreed across teams. Two proposals remain unranked pending mainnet data from Glamsterdam, the upgrade that precedes Hegotá and focuses on improving scalability and strengthening the base layer; client teams could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026 once Glamsterdam is complete.

The cadence follows Fusaka, Ethereum’s last major upgrade, which activated on Dec. 3, 2025. Its headline feature, PeerDAS, changed how nodes handle rollup data — each node downloads and uploads less while data capacity for Layer 2 networks grows. Censorship resistance touches core validator responsibilities, and readers who want the deeper technical arc can consult our guide to Ethereum’s upgrade lineage. Our Ethereum upgrades hub will track scope decisions as Glamsterdam approaches. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Late-2026 Build Window in Focus

COINOTAG’s reading of the official publication is that Hegotá is being scoped with unusual discipline: the two must-ship EIPs define the fork, and the Foundation explicitly stated the schedule should bend before either is cut. That is a meaningful commitment for node operators and proof-of-stake participants — client implementation is expected to open in late 2026, giving operators a defined window to build, test and prepare for activation. With FOCIL hardening censorship resistance and Frame Transactions steering the protocol toward post-quantum authentication, Hegotá shapes up as a security-first fork rather than a performance one, and the December 2029 quantum deadline gives that sequencing a hard backstop.