Overview
- Vitalik Buterin, who published a blog post on September 27, 2026, set out a decade‑long vision describing Ethereum as a hybrid system that uses zero‑knowledge proofs, data sampling and specialized distributed services to verify activity instead of re‑executing every transaction.
- PeerDAS, deployed in the December 2025 Fusaka upgrade, already lets nodes check blob availability by sampling rather than downloading all data, which reduces bandwidth needs and helps support far larger Layer 2 throughput.
- Buterin says Hegotá, expected in 2027, will likely be the last upgrade that looks familiar to early Ethereum developers and will include EIP‑7805 (FOCIL), a proposal to add validator‑backed inclusion lists to limit individual block builder censorship while the proposal remains under development.
- The Ethereum Foundation and Protocol Cluster have prioritized post‑quantum work and core cryptography, with research emphases on recursive STARKs, Lean Consensus and hash‑based signatures and a rough target of December 2029 for base‑layer quantum safety, creating schedule pressure on what can land in Hegotá.
- Buterin warns these technical changes must protect decentralization, censorship resistance and permissionlessness, since moving verification to proofs and specialized infrastructure will lower node costs but could concentrate power if governance and client implementations do not preserve open access.