Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that the upcoming Hegotá upgrade, scheduled for 2027, may be the final traditional hard fork for the network. According to Buterin, this update represents the last iteration whose technical features would remain familiar to users who have followed the project since its inception in 2015.
Following Hegotá, the development roadmap will pivot toward advanced technologies. These include recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, quantum-safe cryptography, and optimized consensus mechanisms. This shift marks the evolution of Ethereum from a standard blockchain into a cryptographic world computer.
The new architecture aims to move significant computation offchain while utilizing the base layer for transaction settlement, verification, and maintaining shared state. This approach is intended to reduce the workload on network nodes and enable the operation of lighter nodes, as noted by Ethereum researcher Barnabé Monnot.
The transition has sparked debate regarding the balance between offchain processing and onchain data storage. While some argue that keeping critical records onchain is essential for user accessibility, others suggest that offchain computation could enable more complex decentralized finance applications, such as advanced lending protocols.
