Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum’s planned upgrades will combine blockchain design with advanced cryptography.
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He expects Hegota, planned for 2027, to be the network’s last conventional fork before more extensive protocol changes.
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His vision includes cryptographic proofs that let nodes verify computation without repeating all of it, alongside broader use of data sampling.
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Buterin projects four- to eight-second slots and finality within eight to 32 seconds by 2030.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a vision for the network’s architecture through 2030, describing a system that relies increasingly on cryptographic proofs, data sampling and work shared among multiple participants.
“It’s really not just a blockchain anymore,” Buterin wrote Sunday while sharing his essay, The cryptographic world computer.
The cryptographic world computer:https://t.co/ueayODeUPo
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 27, 2026
My attempt to express in somewhat concise terms the true meaning of basically everything planned to happen to Ethereum starting from the fork after Hegota. It's really not just a blockchain anymore. It's a hybrid…
He described Ethereum’s future as a hybrid of blockchain design and modern cryptography that could support capabilities unavailable when Bitcoin’s original design was published.
The essay covers changes planned for the period following Hegota, a forthcoming Ethereum upgrade. Buterin has previously described the broader “Lean Ethereum” effort as a multiyear overhaul comparable in scope to the network’s 2022 transition to proof-of-stake.
Hegota Could Mark a Turning Point
Referring to the Ethereum Foundation’s technical roadmap, Buterin said Hegota, planned for 2027, is likely to be Ethereum’s last “normal” fork.
Later changes could involve recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, more efficient consensus algorithms, and cryptography designed to withstand future quantum computing threats.
STARKs are proofs that allow someone to check a computation’s result without performing the entire computation again. Recursive versions can verify other proofs. Formal verification uses mathematical methods to check whether software behaves as intended.
Glamsterdam, the upgrade expected before Hegota, is currently projected for the fourth quarter of 2026. Those dates remain subject to Ethereum’s development process.
Buterin used the Bitcoin whitepaper to illustrate how Ethereum’s design has evolved. In his proposed architecture, nodes would increasingly sample network data and check compact cryptographic proofs instead of downloading and re-executing every block in full.
Ethereum already introduced PeerDAS in its Fusaka upgrade, allowing validators to sample blob data. Buterin said the technique could eventually extend to full block contents. He also described a proposal under which individual signatures and proofs would be handled by entry nodes, with an aggregated signature recorded onchain for each block.
Another planned feature, FOCIL, would give multiple validators a role in ensuring valid transactions enter blocks. Buterin argued that this would move Ethereum further from a model in which one participant effectively controls each block’s contents.
Faster Finality Remains a Goal
By 2030, Buterin projected that Ethereum could have slots—the intervals for proposing blocks—of four to eight seconds. He also outlined a target of eight to 32 seconds for finality, the point at which a block is considered irreversible.
He cautioned that Ethereum itself would not match the response times of conventional servers, though infrastructure built around the network could feel faster to users.
Buterin said decentralization may also help distribute data storage and computation across the network. One difficult problem remains: giving participants efficient access to Ethereum’s expanding state, which records account balances and smart contract data. He suggested that solving this could prove harder than making zero-knowledge proofs efficient and secure.
